Yesterday, the official Twitter account of MLW, former WWE writer Court Bauer’s podcast network which has broken various stories in the past, posted a pretty important piece of TNA news:
https://twitter.com/MLW/status/687659702218526720
https://twitter.com/MLW/status/687659994527969281
This helps explain the item from a couple days ago about TNA increasing talent spending again, which came on the heels of Ryan Satin of ProWrestlingSheet.com reporting that TNA had offered James Storm two and a half times what WWE offered him for NXT. TNA had made cuts last year after the move from Spike TV to Destination America, having reportedly gotten a big cut in rights fees, though not as much as you’d expect given the disparity between the networks. Various contracts were dropped, there were numerous reports of production contractors and wrestlers being paid late, and the Impact Wrestling show itself had a noticeable drop in production values.
With the move to Pop, while there had been reports that they weren’t being paid, there was no further drop in production quality and Mike Bennett leaving both ROH and NJPW indicated that TNA’s financial situation was improving. You also have to wonder if Pop TV president Brad Schwartz publicly being so optimistic that Impact could get Spike level numbers for Pop (so far, they haven’t come close) is indicative of Pop maybe overpaying relative to Impact’s actual value.