Dave Lagana On The Sustainability Of NWA’s Business Model, Talent Needing To Fit Their Format
The Prime Time with Sean Mooney podcast welcomed NWA VP David Lagana to the show this week and Lagana discussed various topics such as their unique business model, his time as a WWE writer, and more. Check out the highlights below.
On NWA’s business model:
This is not a sustainable model. Meaning spending what we spend per episode, and putting it on YouTube…. I’ll be transparent; the production is not being paid for right now on YouTube money alone. But what has happened since we launched was, the audience has grown so quickly, that we are a lot closer to being sustainable than when we started. Paying for this is ticket sales, merchandise and YouTube ad money. Our breaks will evolve as long as it fits the genre and we produce the content so it fits inside of our world. This show can be a marketing tool to anyone who wants to sell to this kind of audience.
On talent needing to fit the NWA format:
I said to everybody, ‘You’re all here for a reason. You were all selected, or have a relationship with us because, very much like Moneyball, everybody that’s here can execute in this format.’ We don’t have a lot of six star pro wrestling guys. It’s just not this format; and because the market is over-saturated, between NXT and AEW and WWE, they’re all doing sort of the same genre of wrestling. So, we went with – and Eli Drake said it, and Nick said it – we went with men; like real men that, when I started watching wrestling, these were the type of men that were on television. Star-looking talents. Eddie Kingston looks like a guy you would see sitting at the end of the bar, that you don’t want to F with. Everybody has a touch of something that’s familiar. I’ve had probably 500 people reach out, wanting to be on this show, and what I say is ‘We work off strong recommendations, of talents that are on our show, that would put their name on the line, saying ‘This person’s can’t miss’ or ‘This person deserves a chance’. And you have to be able to talk.
You can listen to the entire podcast by clicking here.
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