ITV World of Sport tapings postponed

The ITV World of Sport TV tapings scheduled for May 25th and 26th at the Preston Guild Hall have been postponed.

The story was first reported yesterday by Pro Wrestling Insider, but at the time, the talent was not aware and those at Impact didn’t respond to questions regarding the story. Today, some talent has received word and Sha Samuels and Dave Mastiff went on Twitter talking about being available for independent dates that weekend.

The tapings are to be rescheduled and an announcement is expected shortly regarding this.

No direct reason has been given other than changes in the makeup of the project.

The plan was to tape ten shows, which would start airing in July, and then if ratings were successful, it would become a regular Saturday afternoon program. Because of the power of ITV, it would immediately become the most watched wrestling show in the country. For a comparison, the pilot show, airing on December 31st, a bad day for viewing, did 1.25 million viewers while Raw and SmackDown struggle to do 50,000 viewers, albeit in a far worst time slot, and with the limited penetration of Sky.

There is talks of delaying the project until the fall, suing soccer as the Saturday afternoon lead-in, similar to how it was done in the 70s and 80s. But that is not the primary reason for the delay.