Former NJPW owner ‘literally looked up to the heavens’ over WWE-Netflix deal
Bushiroad founder Takaaki Kidani, who guided NJPW for more than a decade, had an animated reaction when WWE & Netflix’s partnership was announced in 2024.
After acquiring NJPW in 2012, Bushiroad no longer owns the promotion. All of NJPW’s shares were transferred from Bushiroad to TV Asahi & CyberAgent at the end of June, and Weekly Playboy in Japan has now published an article about the sale process. Kidani named January 23, 2024 — the day WWE announced its deal with Netflix — as a pivotal moment where he knew NJPW had no other choice but to change the way it operates. The WWE-Netflix deal was a shock to Kidani and caused him to “literally” look up to the heavens.
“It was January 23, 2024 — the day Netflix signed a massive streaming deal with WWE. That was the biggest shock of those 14 years,” Kidani said. “Just for the streaming rights to the shows, it was 740 billion yen over 10 years (at the exchange rate at the time in 2024). There was no way we could win against that. I literally looked up to the heavens. At that moment, I keenly realized, ‘From now on, New Japan has no choice but to partner with a giant capital firm that possesses powerful media and streaming infrastructure. This is no longer a field where Bushiroad can compete on its own.'”
Following the share transfer, TV Asahi and CyberAgent own an equal 46.3 percent stake in NJPW. The company operates as a subsidiary of TV Asahi, which is NJPW’s longtime TV partner. The ownership change has been touted as a positive move due to TV Asahi’s strong traditional broadcast business and CyberAgent’s experience in digital media. CyberAgent operates the streaming platform Abema and owns wrestling promotions NOAH, DDT, and Tokyo Joshi Pro through its subsidiary CyberFight.
How creation of AEW affected NJPW —
Kidani also told Weekly Playboy that, around the time AEW launched in 2019, he was already questioning whether Bushiroad was capable of leading NJPW’s global expansion. The addition of another non-WWE option meant that there was more competition for NJPW globally.
“Around 2019, I began to wonder if Bushiroad was no longer capable of handling global expansion. Just as I felt we had done everything we could, AEW — a promotion second only to WWE — was launched in the US,” Kidani said. “Up until then, New Japan had, to some extent, been fueling enthusiasm locally by serving as an ‘anti-WWE’ alternative, so I anticipated that the emergence of a powerful rival promotion would cause demand to shift.”
An ownership transfer likely would have happened sooner, Kidani says, but he was committed to leading NJPW out of the darkness of the COVID pandemic.
Kidani grew up as a huge wrestling fan, and Bushiroad still owns Stardom despite transferring its ownership of NJPW. Bushiroad’s main business is non-wrestling related with the company focused on producing trading card games.
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.