Friday, July 25, 2008

Present & Future

In 2006, NECW merged with PWF Mayhem, another local promotion to form a unified company that operates under the New England Championship Wrestling name. At that time, we also launched a “sister” promotion – World Women’s Wrestling – which features an all female roster. Triple W, as we call it, is unique for several reasons. It is the only regularly scheduled women’s wrestling promotion in the country. WWW, like NECW, is storyline driven with women in all the roles men portray in a typical pro wrestling promotion.World Women’s Wrestling was a way to diversify the company without going outside what it normally does. As a product, it was something that was long overdue in my opinion, and the talent base was there to accomplish it. This is another case of having to grow the talent and the business over time, but the enormous publicity received for the launch benefited both NECW & WWW. The women’s matches on NECW cards are now billed as WWW Feature Matches and storylines cross between NECW and WWW events.Since the merger and the launch of WWW, NECW’s business has grown steadily and substantially to where sellouts are frequent and new towns are being added.We have recently made substantial investments in video equipment and physical production as we prepare for an eminent move to conventional TV. We are also setting up our own screen printing shop to produce our own T-shirt and other merchandise. DVD sales will be a growth area, as we ramp up our production capabilities and staff.Last year, we ran a total of 28 live events. This year, we will be closing in on 50 before the year is up.Closing ThoughtsNECW is, in my view, what the future of pro wrestling is going to be. It is impossible to compete with WWE on their level for many reasons: the buy in would be enormous, an equal TV platform would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain and the competition for talent on that level would be fierce.The concept of a local/regional wrestling “territory” is viable and getting more viable as time goes on. Changes in television between technology and channel capacity will open up opportunities for those who are savvy enough to be ready to take advantage of them.

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