Dixie Seeking Investors... Billy buys in so there could be June Tapings

ROH invasion angle in TNA, it's happening brother

UPDATE: Since the report on Tuesday morning, PWTorch has learned that Sinclair has renewed interest in investing in TNA. The company was not impressed by the initial offer earlier this year. However, a second set of talks has made Sinclair interested again after TNA submitted a better offer. The recent development makes them a key player in the mix along with SSI.

A part of me is just wondering if Dixie is just using Sinclair to try get better offers from the others she talking to. Find it a bit hard she would end up choosing them because besides "big brother" WWE buying TNA, the 2nd worse scenario in her head has to be having the owners of "little brother" being the ones to invest or even out right buy TNA from her.

Meltz still not outright saying its Sinclair but he as it down in a way that you only have to connect the dots between two news items.  That being said I have seen some people thinking it could be Tribune Media/WGN but with Torch outright saying Sinclair made a offer. I do think Dave talking about Sinclair

From the new observer issue

"There is nothing new regarding the future ownership of the promotion. There are said to be a few different companies they are in talks with regarding selling a percentage or a majority ownership to with one new company now emerging as the favorite. This would end up as a face saving sale and they are offering a significant amount of money for the company, but it’s based on things happening within the company buying that haven’t happened yet and would have to make sense. It’s said that a key is the value and size of the tape library, so it would be a broadcaster looking for time filling programming if things work out. There could also be the value of the international television deals. This would in theory be a better option than Aroluxe, but everything depends on who gets put in charge."

"A story to watch for right now is regarding rumors as to whether Sinclair rebranding the Tennis Channel as the American Sports Network. The American Sports Network is Sinclair’s sports division and it is up and running as something like a subchannel on their stations. If they turn it into a cable channel, which is an if, expanding upon their college sports coverage of ASN and adding other sports, and decide wrestling fits in as a sport, that could explain some moves that could be made. We don’t have exact numbers, but the channel is cleared in around 40 to 50 million homes, putting it’s exposure level in the same range as AXS. But if the rebranding as a sports network is complete, they would need programming to fill time."

TNA Wrestling is about to have a new minority owner, PWInsider.com has exclusively confirmed, in Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan.

PWInsider.com has heard from multiple sources, within and outside of TNA, over the last 48 hours that Corgan, after nearly a year working with TNA, has moved forward with purchasing a minority stake in the company. We have heard from two separate sources that have categorized the deal as being completed while another, while acknowledging things are moving in that direction, cautioned that it's not 100% done. Still, PWInsider.com is confident in our sourcing, so we chose to move forward with the story.

TNA President Dixie Carter would remain the majority owner of the company, although the move obviously bolsters Corgan's influence when it comes to all aspects of TNA. There is no confimed word on how large a percentage of TNA is involved in Corgan's deal at this time.

Corgan, a well known professional wrestling fan who grew up on the likes of wrestling promoted in Chicago by the late Bob Luce and stars like The Crushers and Dick the Bruiser, officially joined TNA in April 2015 with the title of Senior Producer of Creative and Talent Development. He's been involved on camera and behind the scenes, with the company since then.

Prior to his TNA involvment, Corgan worked in the creative reigns of Chicago-area independent promotion Revolution Pro and appeared on camera for the original Extreme Championship Wrestling a number of times. In the documentary "Barbed Wire City", Corgan revealed that in the latter days of that company, Paul Heyman attempted to get him to purchase 10% of ECW for $1 million, but Corgan turned the offer down.

TNA has been seeking "strategic partners and investors" as TNA's John Gaburick coined it to PWInsider.com several months ago, for some time. It appears they have found one in Corgan.

TNA AVOIDED MAJOR DISASTER THIS PAST WEEKEND
By Mike Johnson on 2016-06-14 09:33:00

While TNA Slammiversary was a very good show and TNA will produce a number of hours of Impact Wrestling for a "live" broadcast tonight as well as future episodes of Pop, perhaps their biggest accomplishment was even getting the tapings to take place.

According to a post made by Dean Broadhead, the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of TNA, on his personal Facebook page on Saturday morning, he had to "secure interim financing" with a 12 hour window in order for "production trucks to roll" for this weekend's events.

Broadhead wrote that between Thursday and Friday of last week, he logged over 80 phone calls on his cell phone to attorneys, vendors, bankers and employees. Broadhead noted he had a 12 hour timeframe to deal with lawyers, bankers, accountants and owners and given that they were spread out over the world, that required all of his phone calls.

Broadhead commented, "Maybe it's time to retire. But maybe not until everything is in it's right place."

Should Broadhead follow through with that, it would be a major loss for TNA as we've heard from sources that Broadhead's financial management is a major reason the company has been able to exist the way it has the last few years.

Aroluxe had been handling the financial end of TNA's TV production, so it may have been a case of the company having to reimburse them in order to have them to move forward with producing the PPV and TV. As we broke over the weekend, Billy Corgan is either close to or has come on board as a new minority owner in the company, so it's possible his investment helped the company salvage the weekend.

TNA has been meeting with a number of potential investors and "strategic partners" in recent months. Obviously, they need to strike a deal soon because there's only so many times they can continue to duck before the law of averages catches up to them. We are told there are three potential suitors.

Hobbes posted on Meltzer's F4W board:

Just listened to the segment. A recap:

Dave says TNA was in an absolute crisis situation. Dean Broadhead, the BUSINESS HEAD of TNA, wrote on facebook this week that on Thursday and Friday he logged over 80 business calls with "attorneys, accountants, vendors, bankers, employees" and said it may be time for him to retire, but not until everything is in the right place. When asked why he had to make all those calls, Dean said he had twelve hours to secure financing for TNA, so that production trucks could come. I'll note here that Rovert posted on twitter a few days ago that there had been rumblings of a possible TNA production staff mutiny, so this jives with that.

Dave says he thought TNA had money for this TV taping, but apparently they didn't have enough. Dave brings up again that TNA was originally going to tape not just Monday through Wednesday this week, but an extra month of Impact on Thursday and Friday, and canceled plans for those last two days to save money short term (It'll cost more in the long run, because they'll have to fly everyone out sooner than usual for another set of Impact tapings).

Dave says this was where Billy Corgan came in, and while he doesn't know all the details, TNA had some loans to Aroluxe that needed to be paid back, and seeing as how they run production, "they control all the equipment". Dave makes it sound like these tapings wouldn't have happened without Corgan paying off Aroluxe.

Dave says people are going to get mad that he said all this, but points out that this isn't investigative journalism, Dean Broadhead posted about the trouble they were in on facebook.

Dave says the big problem for TNA coming up, beyond finding money for the NEXT TV tapings, is that sooner or later they have to go to India to fill their once a year obligation to Sony Six. The problem is that while Sony Six will pay some of the costs, they're not going to pay all of them. Dave says a trip to India is very very expensive for TNA, but at the same time, not doing the shows puts them in danger of losing Sony Six, which is one of their key revenue streams. Dave says not only was last year's India tapings canceled, but this year's have already been delayed once.

Billy Corgan just couldn't let them die huh

He's just giving CPR to a corpse at this point.

I know y'all will probably think I'm crazy for listening to Vince Russo's podcast (it's available for free on Podcast One), but he actually has a great interview with Billy Corgan recorded shortly before it was revealed that Corgan became a minority owner of TNA.

Russo really gets in some tough questions and subject matter, particularly in the second half, which was released the week he confirmed to Russo that he was in fact a new minority owner of TNA. It gives you some insight as to what Corgan is trying to do with TNA in its current state, as well as the limitations of trying to get his creative direction onto the current product.