The Latest Details on The WWNLive vs. FloSports Lawsuit

– In late September, the relationship between WWNLive and FloSports completely broke down. FloSports filed a lawsuit against WWN, alleging that WWN “negligently or otherwise misrepresented the number of fans purchasing pay-perview and video-on-demand access” to their events. According to the suit, when FloSports pressed WWN for data backing up their claims, “WWN originally claimed it had lost or deleted that information. Ultimately, WWN sent records listing many subscribers more than once and including purchasers of DVDs instead of broadcast services. Even with that artificial inflation of viewership, the numbers WWN attempted to account for were far less than those represented in its initial spreadsheet.” FloSports argues that WWN’s lies were an effort to induce them to pay out “hundreds of thousands of dollars based on data that was not only inaccurate and unreliable; it was just plain false.” They are claiming that as viewership “drives FloSports’ subscription-base and its advertising revenue, WWN’s misrepresentations robbed FloSports…”

The lawsuit was originally filed in the United States District Court of Travis County, Texas. FloSports is seeking $1 million in damages. WWN filed a motion on November 13, requesting the lawsuit being dismissed, citing that the suit was filed in a venue (Texas) that lacks jurisdiction over WWNLive. Flosports had argued the case should be heard in Texas since they were doing business with WWN in that State. WWN also argued that the court case being held in Texas would be a hardship for the company as those with working knowledge of the company live in Florida (Hamaoui) and Massachusetts (Sapolsky) and holding the case in Texas would force them to travel regularly to Texas, a venue for FloSports.

Flosports’ lawsuit alleges that, “WWN negligently or otherwise misrepresented the number of fans purchasing pay-per-view and video-on-demand access to their fighting events. When pressed for the data that backed up WWN’s spreadsheet of viewership, WWN originally claimed it had lost or deleted that information. Ultimately, WWN sent records listing many subscribers more than once and including purchasers of DVDs instead of broadcast services. Even with that artificial inflation of viewership, the numbers WWN attempted to account for were far less than those represented in its initial spreadsheet.” And that, “WWN induced FloSports to pay it hundreds of thousands of dollars based on data that was not only inaccurate and unreliable; it was just plain false.” WWNLive responded by denying there were any falsehoods in the Spreadsheet data Flosports received from WWN, noting, “That data was pulled from and compiled by a now-defunct third-party company named Fineline Hosting that was based in Florida.” WWN is arguing that since the data was compiled by a Florida company (one that is now defunct) and was emailed to Flosports from Florida, there is no actual merit to claiming “negligent misrepresentation” in the state of Texas – even if there was indeed inaccurate information.

The FloSlam streaming service officially launched in October 2016 with WWN content making up the majority of their content. This whole situation has put a financial hardship on WWNLive as they bumped up the number of events they were running as part of the agreement to five a month and made a greater investment into talents, including signing Keith Lee and others. Flosports had failed to pay WWN during the final two months of their relationship. WWNLive lost out on three months of expected revenue from Flosports and has greatly cut back their event schedule, and are reportedly negotiating with four streaming platforms to air future event.