New Details on How WWN and FloSports Relationship Broke Down

– New details have emerged regarding now the relationship between WWN and FloSports broke down and led into the lawsuit that was earlier filed this month. PWInsider reports that much of the breakdown has to do with previous PPV buyrate numbers for WWN before they signed their deal with FloSports, which is the basis of the suit that was filed on September 15th.

The lawsuit alleges that WWN claimed to have “lost or deleted” their previous PPV buyrate information and when they provided the information, there was “artificially inflation of viewership.” According to PWINsider, when negotiations began in January of 2016 FloSports requested data regarding WWN’s iPPV buys. WWN had just recently left one of their hosting companies and moved to another. The previous company, Fine Line Hosting, had gone out of business and deleted their servers which required WWN “scrambling,” in the site’s words, to get the date and provide it.

In 2016, WWN was doing around 1,300 buys on average for EVOLVE, 600 to 700 for SHINE and less than 200 buys for FIP. The numbers were lower the year before, with EVOLVE’s 2016 buyrates boosted thanks to WWE’s promotion of the brand. The site says that some of the numbers that have surfaced over the last few days are way off, including reports that WWN was doing 5,000 buys per show. At this point, there is no hard evidence for claims that these numbers were provided and court documents will ultimate reveal any truth (or not) to that.

Six months ago, FloSports asked WWN for additional information on their iPPV numbers from before the FloSports deal. The company reached out to the owner of Fine Line Hosting, who provided everything he had. FloSports then asked for more information, which neither WWN nor the old hosting company had. That information, according to one source, involved timestamped informatioon regarding orders on WWNLive. That is information that the old hosting compamny never recorded.

Sources within WWN assert that they provided the correct initial information to FloSports and say that this is the service’s attempt to break the contract with over a year left to go before the two sides can decide if they’re moving ahead. The same sorces say that within twenty-four hours of the information being provided to FloSports, WWN was offered a deal to create content to the service. They ramped up their event schedule from two to three shows a month to five in order to meet FloSports’ needs. There was no contractual obligation from WWN to do anything more than produce and provide content, and there is nothing in the contract that would have had penalties for WWN if they didn’t meet performance benchmarks.

WWN apparently had no inclination that anything was wrong in the relationship until they learned of the lawsuit, which came to their attention while they were in the middle of producing last week’s SHINE show. In addition, FloSports reportedly indicated yesterday (Thursday) to WWN that they wished to continue their relationship. There have been negotiations over the last week, though no agreement has yet been reached. As of today, FloSports has pulled all WWN programming from the service and has stopped paying WWN for content created in July, August and September.

The site also notes that FloSports tried to initially seek deals with ROH and NJPW alongside WWN, and ultimately WWN signed first while the other two companies passed.

WWN will air this weekend’s shows on WWN Live for $10 each. If you provide documentation that you currently subscribe to FloSlam, you can order the shows for $5 each. The shows have to be ordered directly due to the short-notice change, which you can do fromo the link in the below tweet:

Here's how you can watch EVOLVE tonight and tomorrow…. https://t.co/BKSD8PD5yE

— EVOLVE Wrestling (@WWNEVOLVE) September 22, 2017