A British skilled wrestler is in talks with potential backers to safe thousands and thousands of kilos in funding for a revamped European sequence that may intention to capitalise on the game’s British fan base.
Sky Information has learnt that Ben Webb, who participated within the WWE franchise below the identify Trent Seven, is working with advisers to lift about £5m to assist construct Undertaking Struggle into “Europe’s primary televised wrestling model”.
Mr Webb has enlisted Oakwell, the sports activities advisory agency which can also be engaged on efforts to draw non-public capital into British biking, to advise on the fundraising and the event of the brand new product.
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The Undertaking Struggle workforce is alleged to have held discussions with Sundown+Vine, the manufacturing firm and Paramount, the proprietor of Channel 5 within the UK, about collaborating on the brand new enterprise.
Talks with potential buyers are understood to have been underway for weeks.
If efficiently secured, the brand new funding could be raised at a pre-money valuation of roughly £10m.
The capital would enable Undertaking Struggle to interrupt even in its third yr, based on its architects.
Mr Webb mentioned the venture’s ambition was to “rework the UK and European skilled wrestling panorama and create a enterprise valued at over £100m over the subsequent 5 years”.
It comes amid burgeoning curiosity in wrestling amongst worldwide audiences, with Netflix drawing practically 5 million world views for the debut of its RAW wrestling occasion in January.
In the meantime, All Elite Wrestling, based in 2019, has a US broadcast cope with Warner Bros Discovery mentioned to be value no less than $150m yearly.
Analysis means that as much as six million individuals in Britain alone take into account themselves to be wrestling fans, with Undertaking Struggle aiming to faucet into that base and bridge the hole between die-hard and informal followers, whereas additionally aiming to help the unbiased wrestling scene.
“I constructed an organization from a disused scout hut with 40 family and friends within the crowd and grew it organically to hundreds on the NEC, everywhere in the UK, Japan, Mexico, USA and the world, and it helped modified the panorama of British wrestling,” Mr Webb informed Sky Information.
“There’s a enormous, passionate skilled wrestling fanbase within the UK that lacks a home promotion to observe and is underserved by present promotions.”
Mr Webb is a former two-times Tag Group Champion in WWE with 16 years’ expertise wrestling the world over for WWE, AEW, TNA, New Japan Professional Wrestling, and different backers.
He additionally owns the Struggle Membership Professional model, which has staged reveals on the Birmingham NEC, in addition to in Tokyo, Mexico and the US.
Undertaking Struggle’s advisory board contains Roger Draper, former chief government of Sport England and the Garden Tennis Affiliation, and Peter Angell, the CEO of Sundown+Vine.
The enterprise can also be formulating a broader content material distribution technique aimed toward utilising wrestlers’ present social media followers, and content-sharing partnerships with main wrestling-adjacent influencers.
Mr Webb mentioned Undertaking Struggle would have a gender-balanced roster, together with feminine wrestlers from the UK, US, China, Japan, Australia, France, India, and Canada.
The roster of wrestlers being lined up is alleged to have a mixed social media following of greater than 12 million.
A premium pilot occasion is predicted to happen subsequent yr, relying upon the profitable completion of the fundraising.
