Toronto, Ortario, Canada based Anthem Sports & Entertainment has acquired a majority stake of AXS TV today with the intent to boost up their wrestling promotion Impact Wrestling (formerly known as Total Nonstop Action Wrestling or TNA Wrestling for short, and was briefly known as Global Force Wrestling during a attempting merger with the promotion of the same name, founded by Jeff Jarrett who also co-founded TNA with his dad Jerry). AXS TV was founded in 2001 as HD Net, one of the first 24/7 HD TV networks devolved to give those who owned HDTV sets and had a cable/satellite subscriber who were early adopters of the type of TV that would later become the standard in TV when HD became mainstream in the late 2000s/early 2010s. then in 2012, with HD now being mainstream and Anschutz Entertainment Group buying some shares of the network, they rebranded the network to AXS TV to align itself to it's online ticket selling service AXS. int he years since the rebrand, Ryan Seacrest and his company Ryan Seacrest Media, Creative Artists Agency, CBS Corporation and 2929 Entertainment have all acquire some shares of the network. no word yet on whether AEG, Seacrest, 2929 Entertainment and or CBS have sold their shares of AXS TV to Anthem. CBS of course is in the process of remerging with Viacom so they would have most likely sold their shares of the network off.
The network has hosted wrestling content before in 2009, they picked up Ring Of Honor Wrestling back when the promotion was still not yet sold to Sinclair Broadcasting Group and aired ROH on HDNet for a year (when it was still HDNet). in 2015, AXS TV picked up the US rights to the top wrestling promotion in Japan, New Japan Wrestling and have aired matches from that promotion for 4 years, and have aired their US events since NJPW started doing US live events in 2017. also, earlier this year, AXS started airing WOW: Women of Wrestling, a women's wrestling promotion that originally started up in 2000 that aired a full season in 2000-2001 in syndication only to be canceled and became defunct until 2012 when the promotion was revived and aired their shows online until earlier this year when AXS acquired the TV rights. so Impact Wrestling, which Anthem has owned since 2017 is in good hands with AXS TV. Impact Wrestling has been truly searching for a much better TV home after they moved from Pop TV to Pursuit Channel at the start of the year. Anthem owned some shares of that network and Impact Wrestling was a bad fit for the channel as it's clear the channel's main format is carter to outdoor enthusiast and hunters and plus they have screwed up a couple of broadcast of the promotion as they didn't air the second half of the main event of one episode and then reaired a previous episode instead of a new episode one week earlier this Summer.
Hollywood Reporter article about the deal:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mark-cuban-sells-stake-axs-tv-hdnet-movies-steve-harvey-anthem-sports-1238448
The network has hosted wrestling content before in 2009, they picked up Ring Of Honor Wrestling back when the promotion was still not yet sold to Sinclair Broadcasting Group and aired ROH on HDNet for a year (when it was still HDNet). in 2015, AXS TV picked up the US rights to the top wrestling promotion in Japan, New Japan Wrestling and have aired matches from that promotion for 4 years, and have aired their US events since NJPW started doing US live events in 2017. also, earlier this year, AXS started airing WOW: Women of Wrestling, a women's wrestling promotion that originally started up in 2000 that aired a full season in 2000-2001 in syndication only to be canceled and became defunct until 2012 when the promotion was revived and aired their shows online until earlier this year when AXS acquired the TV rights. so Impact Wrestling, which Anthem has owned since 2017 is in good hands with AXS TV. Impact Wrestling has been truly searching for a much better TV home after they moved from Pop TV to Pursuit Channel at the start of the year. Anthem owned some shares of that network and Impact Wrestling was a bad fit for the channel as it's clear the channel's main format is carter to outdoor enthusiast and hunters and plus they have screwed up a couple of broadcast of the promotion as they didn't air the second half of the main event of one episode and then reaired a previous episode instead of a new episode one week earlier this Summer.
Hollywood Reporter article about the deal:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mark-cuban-sells-stake-axs-tv-hdnet-movies-steve-harvey-anthem-sports-1238448
