New Details on The World of Sport Tapings Being Delayed

According to The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the public story in regards to the World of Sport tapings being delayed is that the tapings were too close to the dates for the Impact tapings in India (May 30 & June 1) and they are having trouble getting new dates. The real issue is that ITV and Impact did not come to a business agreement over their partnership. ITV wants to do it, and the feeling was that they had the structure to handle a taping for one show, but not to run a promotion, which is why they tried to make a partnership with Impact.

Whether ITV would do it on their own or work with a U.K. promotion is still up in the air; the problem with the UK promotions is that all the talent in the UK, besides those signed with WWE & Anthem, are free agents and work everywhere; ITV would want a crew under contract so WWE couldn’t pick them off.

The Mirror reported that the shows won’t be taped until 2018, which would likely kill the project, because by the time they got around to taping, the feeling is that the top talent would have signed elsewhere. Many of the talents do not think it’s going to happen now since no new dates were announced and also because of the way it quietly was announced as not happening. ITV wanted to try wrestling, which used to be cheap programming, but now it’s expensive and you have to sign the talent to deals or you’ll lose them if they are good to one of many different companies, most notably WWE. There are major issues that aren’t settled, but ITV supposedly has a backup plan, but working with What Culture is not something that is being considered at this time.