According to the Observer, ITV's World of Sport future is in serious doubt and all because of TNA/Impact getting involved. ITV currently looking at the idea of partnering with someone else because of how toxic Impact has been to their project.
Wrestlers who were interested in ITV's series are also now looking at other options instead.
ITV is pissed their current plans had to be delayed and might try for an early 2018 launch but likely dropping it by then.
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Originally Posted by Observer
The key problem is what was reported here last week regarding ITV and Impact not coming to a business agreement over their partnership. ITV wants to do it, and the feeling was that they had the structure to handle a taping for one show, but not a promotion, which is where TNA came aboard since they have experience in running a wrestling business. It’s certainly not dead that they would be able to reach an agreement and do tapings later. It also may not happen. Whether ITV would do it on their own or work with a U.K. promotion is still up in the air. The problem with the U.K. promotions is that all the talent in the U.K., besides those signed with WWE & Anthem are free agents and work everywhere, and ITV would want a crew under contract so WWE couldn’t pick them off. The Mirror reported that the shows won’t be taped until 2018 which will kill the project because I don’t see any top talent not getting signed somewhere before that. A lot of the talent doesn’t think it’s going to happen now since no new dates were announced and just the way it quietly was announced as not happening. One person key in the plans said the story they were told was they were looking at starting in the next year, which sounds a lot less promising than if they said they’d be taping in the next two months. There were several minor things done to sabotage the project but ultimately I think ITV wanted to try wrestling which used to be cheap programming in the old days, but now it’s expensive and you have to sign the talent to deals or you’ll lose them if they are good to one of many different companies, most notably WWE. There are major issues that aren’t settled. ITV supposedly has a backup plan, but working with What Culture is not something that is being considered right now based on what we’re told. A lot of the talent signed by ITV was unhappy when the word was that Impact would be taking over and wanted out, and even more disappointed when these shows were canceled. Some were told that it may not be until next year when the first tapings take place, which is where the starting back in 2018 story came from. There was actually talk among some of the guys of a Radicalz 2000 jump to WWE, which obviously would have loved to have taken the top tier talent from the project, but many of the key contracts with ITV from the first set of tapings were for one year, so they have a long way to go. There was talk of some of them being at the WWE tryouts, but I’m not sure WWE would let guys try out publicly who have existing contracts and we didn’t hear anything about the contracted guys here trying out. Others involved with the project outright told us that given how everything went down this past week, with the cancellation and not even a clue of a new tapings date, or the nebulous early 2018, that they are going with their own mentality of like it’s not happening, and it’s a big disappointment because much of the talent had high hopes for the project
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