What’s the story?
WCPW (What Culture Pro Wrestling) is reportedly taking a big hit owing to a major change in YouTube policy.
WCPW has cancelled several upcoming events and is apparently offering refunds to fans who had purchased tickets to the aforementioned events beforehand. WCPW PPVs will go forward as scheduled, however, a vast majority of its weekly shows have been scrapped, effective immediately.
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WCPW is a British professional wrestling promotion that has quickly risen to prominence in the last year or so.
The organisation broadcasts its content via YouTube, with advertisement revenue that it earns courtesy fans viewing its shows on YouTube being the major source of income for WCPW.
The heart of the matter
YouTube has reportedly changed its policy as regards wrestling and advertising, owing to complaints from several advertisers. Advertisers have apparently taken issue with the ads promoting their respective products being featured in professional wrestling videos – videos that they consider ‘harmful’ and ‘questionable’.
YouTube, for its part, has updated its ‘restricted list’ for content that can no longer monetize itself, with said content including professional wrestling.
WCPW announced that its June 9th, June 16th, June 23rd, June 30th, July 14th, July 28th, August 4th, August 11th and August 18th shows have been cancelled, with ticket refunds being offered automatically to fans who’ve purchased them beforehand.
Below are a few excerpts from the PR statement released by WCPW regarding the same:
“This is a decision that we absolutely did not want to make, but unfortunately it has been taken out of our hands by YouTube---Owing to a change in their monetisation policy, which has now classified wrestling as “non-advertiser friendly”, it is no longer financially viable for WCPW to produce a weekly free show of the quality our fans deserve.”
“Since the change the WCPW YouTube channel has seen its advertising income decimated, with our recent match between Alberto El Patron and Rey Mysterio Jr earning only $44 despite receiving over 1,100,000 views. This is a reduction of around 98% in what would have been Loaded’s main source of revenue.”
WCPW added that while it supports YouTube in their endeavour to make the video-viewing site safer, the fact remains that wrestling is not a violent sport, but instead merely about scripted-entertainment, amazing feats of athleticism and most of all, story-telling.
Besides, the aforementioned YouTube policy will not affect the WWE and videos promoted by the company, as WWE is promoted under the genre of sports-entertainment.
What’s next?
WCPW will reportedly partner-up with like-minded individuals and organisations in order to start a campaign in order to reverse this change of policy from Youtube. The promotion’s PPVs and the Pro Wrestling World Cup will go forward as scheduled, as will the show on June 2nd.
Author’s take
The aforementioned change in YouTube policy that has drastically reduced the ability of professional wresting-related videos generating money through online ad revenue is discriminatory toward the smaller pro-wrestling promotions.
The decision is said to have negatively affected the livelihood of several small-scale pro-wrestling organisations, journalists and others, and in my humble opinion, needs to be reversed as soon as possible.
