Back in May, New Japan surprised the pro wrestling world by announcing that all shares of the company held by its primary owner Bushiroad would be sold to New Japan’s television partner TV Asahi and CyberAgent, another Japanese Entertainment company that already owned several pro wrestling brands.Takaaki Kidani is Bushiroad’s founder, and was ultimately responsible for New Japan Pro-Wrestling for more than a decade after acquiring it from Yukes in 2012. He spoke to Japanese outlet Weekly Playboy
about the sale, and says he began to realize NJPW couldn’t succeed they way he’d hoped when AEW launched:
“Around 2019, I began to wonder if Bushiroad was no longer capable of handling global expansion. Just as I felt we had done everything we could, AEW — a promotion second only to WWE — was launched in the US. Up until then, New Japan had, to some extent, been fueling enthusiasm locally by serving as an ‘anti-WWE’ alternative, so I anticipated that the emergence of a powerful rival promotion would cause demand to shift.”
A sale might have happened earlier, Kidana says, but when COVID hit he was determined to see New Japan through the pandemic. He remembers the exact date when he knew Bushiroad didn’t have the resources to succeed in the global pro wrestling market:
“It was January 23, 2024 — the day Netflix signed a massive streaming deal with WWE. That was the biggest shock of those 14 years. Just for the streaming rights to the shows, it was 740 billion yen over 10 years [at 2024 exchange rates]. There was no way we could win against that. I literally looked up to the heavens. At that moment, I keenly realized, ‘From now on, New Japan has no choice but to partner with a giant capital firm that possesses powerful media and streaming infrastructure. This is no longer a field where Bushiroad can compete on its own.’”
WWE’s Netflix deal certainly did change the pro wrestling business. Some of those changes will only be clear looking back from a future vantage point, but some will be concrete.
The sale of New Japan seems to be one.
