Anthem Sports president: TNA in ‘60 or 90-day window’ for new media rights deal

Anthem Sports Group president Carlos Silva says TNA is close to securing a new media rights deal.

One day after revealing he’s seeking a deal that would allow the promotion to air live 52 weeks a year, Silva appeared on Wednesday’s edition of The Ariel Helwani Show and was asked if there was a timeline for finalizing a new agreement.

“We’ve been working on it since the beginning of the year, really since I joined. And it really has accelerated over the last 60 days,” Silva said.

“I think we could be in a 60- or 90-day window to get something done. I mean, as you know, the media landscape is changing every single day, and literally week to week things are changing.”

“It’s never done until the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed, but we’re working hard at it,” he added.

Silva also expanded on his comments from Tuesday’s interview about going live each week. He mentioned that they have experimented recently with airing a live episode of Impact on TNA+ before it aired on AXS TV the following Thursday.

Silva also mentioned that they’ve been asked about going live each week by potential broadcast partners.

“We’ve been asked by many partners that they’d like it to be live 52 weeks a year. And so we’re talking through how we would do that. Maybe it wouldn’t go live in January straight away, 52 weeks. But we would certainly lean into that to try and make it happen now.”

He later clarified that this wouldn’t necessarily mean they would be in a new location each week and on the road all year.

Helwani asked Silva about the speculation that WWE’s motivation for partnering with TNA is to hurt AEW. Silva said that was not his understanding and that the partnership provides WWE current and former talent another place to work.

He responded:

“(That’s) not really how I see it. I just think that we’ve built such a great partnership together that I think they see the value in not only building up stars like a Joe Hendry that came up through TNA, but also letting the Hardys and Nic (Nemeth) and others find another place to continue to celebrate their greatness. And they’ve now also crossed back over into WWE and NXT as well over these last couple of months. So I think that combination is why we’re all working so well together.”

Silva’s full appearance on today’s episode of The Ariel Helwani Show is available below: