In two separate moves that may be more connected that it appears, IMPACT Wrestling announced yesterday that they had retained the services of Kings Highway Media to help Anthem and IMPACT Wrestling expand their global branding, by way of video and content distribution through various multimedia platforms. Kings Highway Media is headed by Andrew Whittaker, who used to work for the WWE in the 2000s and helped the WWE

TORONTO | NEW YORK – IMPACT Wrestling, a subsidiary of Anthem Sports & Entertainment Corp., announced today that it has engaged Kings Highway Media, LLC to assist and expand IMPACT Wrestling’s video and content distribution across all platforms, traditional and digital, worldwide.

“We are delighted to have Kings Highway Media join us at this pivotal time as we embark on a major initiative to expand our audiences and continue to build our brand,” said Ed Nordholm, president of IMPACT Wrestling. “With an outstanding product, increasing fan engagement across all platforms and a rapidly growing audience, we are confident that Andrew and his team will leverage our existing global footprint into new markets and seize the opportunity to grow our presence on alternative media platforms.”

“Kings Highway Media is delighted to have been chosen to assist IMPACT Wrestling with the expansion of their global footprint,” said Kings Highway Media Managing Partner Andrew Whitaker. “The 2017 acquisition by Anthem and the new creative, management and branding of the now ascendant IMPACT Wrestling makes this the right time to deliver IMPACT Wrestling’s live pay-per-view events, 52 weeks of original programming and immense content creation capabilities to more audiences and fans worldwide.”

Kings Highway Media, LLC, founded in 2012 and led by Mr. Whitaker along with his partners Andrew Madigan and Edward Whitaker, has established itself as a premier full service global media brand distribution advisory firm, highly adept at introducing and expanding the global media presence for venture capital, private equity, IP rights holders and sports & entertainment companies in the United States and internationally. Andrew Whitaker is widely recognized for his success in creating the international media market for professional wrestling content in his previous longstanding role with WWE.

According to Whittaker’s bio on the Kings Highway website:

With a limited staff and resources, he then became the sole international executive to lead the company into the global arena. Leveraging the successful strategies he built in the United States, he expanded the live event and ancillary businesses in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and initiated the sale of the brand to the European media as an entertainment franchise. He subsequently spearheaded WWE’s further expansion into both Asia Pacific and Latin America.

As Executive Vice President, International he negotiated the largest Media Rights agreements in WWE International history with News Corp’s BSkyB (UK) Zee Networks Taj TV’s Ten Sports (India) Sumitomo’s JSports (Japan) and Samsung founder company CJ Media (Korea).

While hiring a firm with such pedigree is a wise choice at this stage of IMPACT’s redevelopment following a solid 2018 that has won back a lot of former fans and increasingly acclaimed events, it may actually have been spurned from some other news that came out today.

PWInsider is reporting that as of next week, IMPACT Wrestling is being moved out of it’s prime time TV slot at 8pm on PopTV and shifting to a 10pm start going forward. Details of IMPACT’s current deal with PopTV aren’t immediately available, but the company re-signed with PopTV in September of 2017 for a deal for 2018, but many insiders stated it wasn’t the greatest deal for IMPACT. At the time, IMPACT was still suffering from the damage of the previous few years and didn’t have much leverage. If IMPACT decides to leave PopTV at the conclusion of this deal – which PopTV’s move of the timeslot may be an indicator the channel is already preparing for it – one would think Whittaker and Kings Highway Media would be able to secure something much better for the company going forward. IMPACT Wrestling debuted on PopTV in January of 2016, after spending the previous year on Destination America. Prior to DA, they were on Spike TV from 2005 through 2014.