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TNA: Update on profit expectaions for 2008

Dave Meltzer confirmed that TNA is on its way to being profitable in 2008. This means they will not lose money this year, but they’re still perhaps decades away from making up the $35 million or so that they lost in their first five years. Nothing has changed in terms of PPV buys, but they’ve cut a lot of costs (some of which have been positive and some of which have made life more difficult for the undercard wrestlers who aren’t making any money to begin with) and if you factor in money made from Spike, money made from international TV distribution, money made from house shows, money made from merchandising and their upcoming Midway video game, etc., they have gotten to the point where they are self-sustaining. That’s good. Next step is to get someone to write Impact who has a clue, because they have shown that they have the potential to do as many as 60,000 PPV buys for shows, yet they’ve dipped below 20,000 several times in the past 12 months because Impact is an utter failure of a television show. Doing 60,000 buys as opposed to 18,000 is a difference of $504,000 per month, or $6 million per year. They lost about $7 million per year, so if Impact were effective like it has been effective on at least one verified occasion they could make enough per year to virtually make up what they lost per year in their entire history since their inception. This story is actually a blessing and a curse. The good news is that TNA is not going out of business anytime soon and that will allow a lot of guys to make a living in pro-wrestling. The bad news is that since it’s self-sustaining and since the TV ratings, while they’re not growing, are at least steady, Dixie Carter is going to be in no hurry to replace Vince Russo and company, meaning it could literally be years of this awful programming that we’re going to have to sit through. Many times I have considered, for my own sanity, giving up on Impact and only watching the PPVs. I would be a very happy man if that were the case, but I feel an obligation to report on their TV. Sometimes I feel this is some sort of syndrome.