Backstage News On Impact Wrestling’s New TV Deal

Earlier today Impact Wrestling announced that their weekly TV series will be moving from Pop TV next month, and on Friday, January 11 the show will debut on Pursuit Channel at 10 PM EST.

PWInsider is reporting that the move is being looked at as a step forward for the company financially, and the new network is said to be happy about Impact joining their lineup.

It’s also worth noting that Impact’s parent company, Anthem Media, is a partner in the Pursuit Channel.

However, the new deal presents some issues as Pursuit Channel’s reach is limited, even more so than Destination America and Pop TV. The network is not available through Comcast and some other major cable providers. Other cable providers such as, Verizon Fios, which do offer the channel may only provide it as part of a paid tier, so fans would have to pay more to get the channel in order to watch Impact.

At this point it’s not clear if Impact will be streaming upcoming shows on YouTube or Twitch so that fans who don’t have access to Pursuit can watch.

You can find out if Pursuit is available through your cable provider by clicking here.

Impact reportedly had conversations with a number of cable outlets regarding a potential deal, but the fact that the show ended up on Pursuit Channel, which Anthem Media has a vested interest in, seems to indicate that the conversations didn’t go well.

It’s also being reported that Impact sources had nothing but good things to say about Pop TV, and that the company went from working on a barter deal on advertising to getting paid a fee from the network. The fee was believed to be $1 million per year, with Impact making another $1-2 million a year on advertising.

Pop plans on rebranding in 2019, so there are changes coming to the network and Impact didn’t fit into those plans.