The Latest Info on The WWNLive vs. FloSports Lawsuit

According to FloSlam, here is the latest on the WWNLive vs. FloSports situation. Flosports filed a motion on December 22nd in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division seeking to have WWNLive’s previous request for the lawsuit the streaming provider has brought against WWN shut down. The lawsuit, seeking $1 million in damages, revolves around allegations that WWN, run by Sal Hamaoui and Gabe Sapolsky, had “robbed Flosports” by providing false information that led to the streaming provider paying inflated prices for WWN (EVOLVE, FIP, Style Battle, SHINE) content. WWN argues that the court lacks the jurisdiction to rule over their company, as they are based in Florida and their top executives, Hamaoui and Sapolsky, reside in Florida and Massachusetts, respectively. Flosports claims that when WWN entered into an agreement with the company, they realized that Flosports was a Texas-based company and therefore, fell under Texas law. The filing notes that Hamaoui traveled to Texas to meet with Flosports and then signed the agreement between the two companies while in Texas. They also stated that when WWNLive signed their five-year deal with the company, they agreed to be governed by Texas law.

Flosports continues to claim that WWNLive had misled their company, claiming WWN had, “induced FloSports to enter this Exclusive Media Agreement (“the Agreement”) by misrepresenting the number of fans purchasing viewership access to their events, and that representation and warranty was expressly incorporated into the parties’ written contract. WWN contractually promised that “all data [it] provided . . . regarding financial performance of events [it] put on . . . was accurate, reliable and truthful.” FloSports paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to WWN in reliance on this promise. But they say that WWN’s data was false. When pressed for the data that backed up WWN’s representations, WWN originally claimed the data was lost or deleted. Ultimately, WWN sent records listing subscribers more than once and including customers who had not purchased broadcast services. Even accounting for that artificial inflation of its viewership, WWN’s numbers proved far less than originally represented.

Flosports has argued that while WWN has stated they did not regularly run Texas, they have run six events in the State. Many of those were due to the timing and location of WWE’s WrestleMania being held in Dallas in 2016 and that WWN had not run Texas prior to that point and did not run there again until after the WWNLive-Flosports agreement was signed. They also noted that WWN would have returned to Texas in November 2017 had Flosports not severed their agreement. Flosports is argued “WWN’s physical presence in Texas during these multiple stages of the Agreement distinguishes this case from any authority cited by WWN” and that WWN’s relationship with Flo required continued travel to Texas. Flosports also argued that the agreement was for a long-term relationship between the two companies, including Flofilms being tapped to produce films designed to promote WWNLive events, three of which had been produced at the time the relationship was severed and that WWN. Two of the films featured Matt Riddle and another was an “All Access” film surrounding the WWNLive More Then Mania event.

Flosports says that they also teamed in the production of WWNLive events. They also cited that a document review to “has revealed at least 368 emails sent from WWN to FloSports in Texas during the course of the parties’ dealings, in addition to voluminous text messages, several conference calls between the parties, and the in-person meetings.” They argue that since the agreement led to each side working together in Texas, the case should be heard in Texas. They are also arguing that since Gabe Sapolsky was involved from Massachusetts, where he resides, “so his share of communications and contractual activity occurred outside of Florida as well.” Floslam also says that their payments to WWN came from Florida and that when events were streamed, they were done from Flosports’ headquarters in Austin, Texas.

In an interesting turn, the filing featured statements from Tobey Mergler, the former Vice President of Global Rights Acquisition for FloSports and Phil Wendler, the current Senior Vice President of Global Rights Acquisition and Subscription. They are now redacting the subscription numbers that Hamaoui provided to Flosports, despite those numbers having been previously revealed in court and publicly reported. The FloSlam streaming service officially launched in October 2016 with WWN as their flagship content for wrestling. The issues with WWN became public in September and after the relationship fell apart, Flosports shut down their service. WWNLive sources have stated that they will be filing a counter-suit against Flosports, but as of this writing, they haven’t.