Source: Phil Lowe of iFight365.com
Just a week out from a tour of the UK, TNA on Friday afternoon announced a “scheduling Change” for UK fans wanting to watch this weekend’s Genesis PPV.
A short statement on the TNA website read: “TNA Wrestling’s January 17th pay-per-view “Genesis” will be available in the UK starting at 3 PM Monday, January 18 on BT Vision.
“The program will be available to all BT Vision customers. BT Vision is BT’s broadband IPTV service.”
We’ve left messages with TNA today seeking confirmation but at time of writing, it certainly appears that digital satellite and cable customers hoping to watch the show via Bravo will be left disappointed.
There had been plans for the show to air live online on a pay-per-view basis for UK fans, according to the Daily Star, with TNA president Dixie Carter quoted on the Star’s website last week as saying: “You’ll see more wrestling and less talk. We’ll let the action propel those storylines versus the talk. The fans will be the ones who win.”
I could be wrong, but I believe any plans to stream the show live at 1-4am would have been a complete disaster – especially if TNA had expected fans to pay to watch a webcast that hour on a Sunday night. While some would have ordered it, expecting people to pay the supposed £10.50 charge (around $17) as opposed to watching an illegal web stream for free would have been a hard sell. There’s obviously some people who stay up until 4am to illegally watch TNA shows as things are, but judging from the amount of activity on wrestling forums, those numbers are small anyway.
If the show does airs exclusively on BT Vision, a subscription service that offers television via broadband internet, then viewing figures are going to be pretty low.
BT Vision has around 436,000 customers, according in their last quarterly figures released last September. In July 2008 TNA signed a deal with BT Vision for them to broadcast PPVs as well as other TNA programming (other than Impact) on a 14-day delay basis.
TNA Impact and monthly PPVs usually bring in anywhere from 25,000-80,000 viewers on Bravo – and that is a channel available to several million more viewers than BT Vision offers. I’m not 100% on the status of TNA’s relationship with Bravo at time of writing, but as noted several times on the site last year, we believed the contracts with both Bravo and BT Vision signed in 2008 to have been up around now.
We’ll post an update on the site later today or over the weekend should we get an update or comments from TNA.
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