Former WWE VOD Content Director Discusses ‘Win-Win’ In WWE Working With Indie Companies

With WWE Network launching in 2014, fans were able to access the WWE library along with the libraries of WCW, ECW, and other promotions throughout history. 

Over the years, WWE began working with Independent companies such as EVOLVE and PROGRESS to air taped and live shows on the Network. 

John Carlan, who worked with WWE from 1998 to 2020 as a production assistant and producer before becoming the video on Demand Content Director/Supervising Producer in 2014, spoke with Wrestlenomics about WWE acquiring footage by working with Independent promotions. 

“It was a win-win, that’s how I looked at it. It was a win for us because we gained more programming, probably for a discounted price, and we didn’t have to buy the library. It was some sort of contract. That’s not something I negotiated, I’m just the TV guy, I don’t negotiate contracts. That was a hat that I wore ‘the Independent wrestling promotion guy.’ Anything that touched VOD, I had to be involved with. We got the discount, we got the footage, and these folks who were struggling to find a wide platform for their product, holy cow, they got to be on WWE Network. It took us some years to actually get it up because they wanted to make different levels of the Network and different tiers, they went through a couple of years of how the tiers were going to look and where the Indie products were going to go. That was going to be X amount of dollars per month. It took a lot to get up. I worked with it, pretty much from the time we started being in business with these folks, which was 2017/2018,” he said. 

The tiered WWE Network was discussed but never came to fruition before WWE Network eventually merged with Peacock in 2022. 

Carlan continued, discussing having to go through the footage to make sure it was ready for the Network.

“I had to check through every show that came in. Go through all the music, what was it, where did it come from. Some of them had their own composers, that was fishy, you had to look into that from a legal standpoint. Every now and then, they tried to roll in a real piece that we had to put a stop to. The audio was always all over the place, so that was tricky. It was either too high or too low,” he said.

Elsewhere during the interview, Carlan discussed how the directive changed when it came to Chris Benoit once WWE Classics on Demand became WWE Network. 

You can view his full comments by clicking here. 

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