NWA lost a $500,000 payday by canceling Crockett Cup 2020

The NWA debuted another new show this week. In addition to Carnyland, the first episode of Inside the NWA was released. Host Joe Galli interviewed owner Billy Corgan and writer David Lagana. Lots of interesting tidbits were shared, such as the NWA losing out on a $500,000 payday by canceling Crockett Cup 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

While WWE and AEW have been putting out live shows in empty arenas during the coronavirus pandemic, not all wrestling promotions have deep enough pockets to keep the show rolling. The NWA is one such example. They were gearing up for a major show in the Crockett Cup 2020 with an interpromotional main event between Nick Aldis and Marty Scurll. Crockett Cup 2020 ended up being canceled due to coronavirus concerns. It turned out to be a major financial hit for the NWA to the tune of $500,000 in a lost payday.

Joe Galli: And I got to ask this. The NWA for all intents and purposes is basically a small business. And there are so many small businesses out there that are struggling right now. David, maybe you could talk to this. We had to do what we had to do with the Crockett Cup, which means I know we kind of took a bath on that. Do you have a dollars and sense figure about how much you think we lost between not being able to have that show and the residuals that you would get from that from the merch sales and from everything else? On top of that, how do you see us kind of moving forward and continuing on from a financial standpoint as a company?

David Lagana: Yeah, I think the projected numbers were somewhere over half a million dollars for that one day for Crockett Cup with PPV and ticket sales as far as incoming revenue. It was really hard to not do it, but obviously we didn’t really have much of a choice. The momentum definitely was a loss. We were coming off, Hard Times was higher than Into the Fire. We had a very strong projection of what that would be. We had a lot of really good things.

As far as moving forward, we’ve actually have done okay merchandise-wise. We’re surprised at how much our fans are supporting us, because you know in these hard times we’re trying not to ask everyone for money, because everyone’s in a hard time. For us, this has been really an interesting time to really get deep with our fans. Running Super Powerrr last week, we saw even a giant level of support that we hadn’t even seen in months.

For us as a business, it’s literally a lot of hard of choices. We had to basically stop being a live event company for the very near future, if not all the way until the end of this year. For us, it was a really hard pivot and it was a lot of hard discussions. I think for where the business is going to go, we’ll have to just adjust as the market changes.

With the uncertain future of live events, the NWA has transitioned into alternative programming. It kicked off with the oddball Carnyland show. The weekly schedule will also include a talk show hosted by Nick Aldis, a solo podcast from Eli Drake, and Girl Powerrr. Corgan explained that the idea with these new shows is to continue to entertain with NWA stars and keep fans connected to their roster.

Inside the NWA

A few other interesting items were also shared:

• The dark Ken Anderson story was put to the side, because Anderson was hurt. He didn’t disclose the injury until a couple of weeks before the PPV. NWA shifted story plans to accommodate. Anderson ended up missing a flight for the PPV and that made things more difficult for the storyline. The decision was made to reconnect when Anderson is healthy.
• Allysin Kay, Trevor Murdoch, and Homicide have been standouts as locker room leaders behind the scenes.
• Corgan is a big fan of free agent EC3. He thinks EC3 is a main event A-level talent. Corgan doesn’t understand why EC3 wasn’t given a bigger opportunity in WWE. “If he lands with us, I would love that too. That’s a guy I would go to war with.”

Speaking of possible free agents coming aboard the NWA, Aldis mentioned in an interview with What Culture that Joe Hennig (aka Curtis Axel) is someone he would love to work with.

“For Joe Hennig to get the Ten Pounds of Gold treatment and get that long-form story, really do a deep dive on what this would mean to him, the family history and the title. I would love us to get our hands on Joe Hennig, even if it was just for a short period of time. I feel like I could make magic with Joe Hennig.”

Are you interested in EC3 and Joe Hennig stepping into studio wrestling? Who would you like to see sign with the NWA when business returns? Which of the NWA’s new shows will you be watching?