Major League Wrestling Partners With Range Sports, Court Bauer Comments
Major League Wrestling has formed a new partnership in the hopes of reaching new heights.
Major League Wrestling has formed a new partnership in the hopes of reaching new heights.
As reported by Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated, MLW has partnered with Range Sports, which is led by president Will Funk, who worked for WarnerMedia for the past two decades. There, he had an influential role as the Executive Vice President and made major moves like the NBA on TNT partnership and, alongside CBS, the acquisition of March Madness. Under his guidance, WarnerMedia also started making original programming.
In the wrestling world, Funk is known for being involved with the addition of All Elite Wrestling to Turner Sports’ programming lineup in 2019.
Speaking with Barrasso, MLW CEO Court Bauer commented on the move.
“With so much disruption in the content space, live sports are increasingly valued,” Bauer says. “Range has the resources to take Major League Wrestling to new heights by creating strategic partnerships that enrich and ensure our continued momentum,” Bauer said.
Bauer also expressed his hope that partnering with Range will help MLW continue to grow.
“Range has created a true dream team in the entertainment and sports space, so this is a great opportunity for MLW. Right now, we’re airing in over 60 countries. The goal is to extract maximum value across television, sponsor sales, event touring, and our full portfolio. We want to grow our windows and that is driven by live broadcasts,” he said.
Funk also discussed the partnership and emphasized his excitement about MLW’s diversity, as he sees “tremendous upside” there.
“One of our pillars at Range is identifying growth properties across sports, and we think there is a great opportunity for a distribution partner that wants to build a property, potentially even an equity partner,” Funk says. “Court has experience, knowledge, and the number of hours of programming he has already produced is remarkable. A part that really excites me is MLW’s diversity. There is an appeal to the Hispanic marketplace, which is a huge opportunity for wrestling. There is tremendous upside there–I don’t know that the other promotions have done a great job with diversity. And MLW is a great product,” Funk said.
Unlike a typical agency, Range is a management production company that develops products that it can potentially produce itself. Per Funk, this could prove to be beneficial to MLW in a variety of ways.
“We have an unlimited bandwidth and many potential distribution properties,” Funk says. “We’re going to look at our music division and see if there is someone who is very passionate about pro wrestling who can be a brand ambassador. Beyond film, TV, and music, our branding division can assist MLW in building a more polished brand. From the brand partnership side, we have lots of relationships with Fortune-500 companies that are looking to, specifically, integrate into the fabric of the property in a seamless, organic way. On the network/streaming side, we have relationships with broadcast cable stations and streaming services, so there is an opportunity there to get MLW in front of the right people,” Funk said.
Overall, the goal in the partnership is apparent — to get more eyes on MLW. Funk noted that data and analytics made it clear that MLW has something, and he’s hopeful that Range can help amplify it.
“That’s the priority, getting MLW to as many people as possible. Then we can get to the monetization. We do a lot of proprietary data and analytics, and what that’s telling us is there’s something here. We believe our resources can really amplify what they’re already doing,” he said.
MLW recently announced a National Openweight Championship match for the Super Series event. More information is available here.
