During a recent interview with Weekly Pro Wrestling, New Japan Pro-Wrestling owner Takaaki Kidani explained that he plans on a heavy expansion into the American and global market for the promotion.
Kidani stated that he plans on doing so with a regional territory based in Southern California, and the possibility of other locations as well. NJPW has grown increasingly interested in becoming a global brand in professional wrestling and feels like this is the perfect time to do so.
Here are some highlights from that interview:
“We’re preparing a lot of steps to ensure that 2017 is a big year for us. Firstly, Wrestle Kingdom was a great success. For the first time this millennium, TV-Asahi gave us access to a two-and-a-half hour time slot, the same day, to show a version of the event. We had a lot of attention, not just in Japan, but international media, with the event hashtag being the top trend not just in Japan, but America, U.K. and Germany. New Japan World subscribers suddenly increased, with over half being from abroad.”
“With the high quality of the event, news reverberated internationally more than we had anticipated. Additionally, including promotion and program sales, we have been able to advance into nine different countries, with our talents foreign excursions being part of that, too.”
Kidani also stated that he believes WWE’s days are numbered and believes that their popularity will decline in the coming years.
“I said this on Twitter, but I believe what should be of top concern to WWE is reliance on TV rights fees. If you look at their earnings report, TV and WWE Network makes up over half of their earnings, with live events less than one-quarter. Of their TV rights, two-thirds comes from American cable rights, with the rest being foreign licensing. Now, those rights fees are constantly escalating. If you look into why that is, well for one, from the point of view of the networks, they produce popular television that does well relative to other shows on the same networks. The other reason is changing circumstances outside of cable. The biggest rival to the cable networks are streaming services like Netflix. Netflix subscribers are overtaking cable networks, and that issue of cable cutting is a problem to these networks. All that said, things are changing. The biggest cable sports network, ESPN, has started to see their numbers fall. If you look at how the salaries for Japanese ballplayers in major league baseball shot up, you could see where the sports bubble was big, and I think at the moment we’re seeing it begin to burst.”
It’s been reported that the tension between NJPW and WWE has grown over the last few years due to WWE’s raiding of New Japan talent like AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, not to mention their high interest in Kenny Omega.
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