I know it was pretty close to it. It's really not that hard to lose 50 million a year in pro wrestling if you operate as many PPVs, shows, have all these big payouts with little to almost no returns on any of them at the time.
Cutting out PPVs, and doing less shows, and more reasonable contracts have cut a lot of costs for them now tho. Which was smart. Running all these PPVs and barely getting any buyrates, was a waste. PPVs cost a shyt load of money to put on
Their total payroll for a year is only like 3-4 million, no one makes any money except Sting, Angle and to a lesser extent Bully. Even the years with Hogan, Nash, Booker, RVD and Jeff Hardy, all on the same payroll, it was never that much big money. The rest of the roster makes nothing they are pay by appearance and making hundreds of dollars.
They never had to pay to use the Impact Zone for taping and they barely toured. Almost all their PPVs except like 2 a year where there. There is no way ever, and I mean ever, they lost 50 million in one year.
This year was probably the year they lost the most, and its because of the touring. Every-time they tape for TV, it probably cost them around $400,000 (based off my experience working the indys as a person who would look for venues for our indys and the venues TNA uses, WWE spends about a million just to tape RAW every week) but they tape two weeks in one night, so it's really like 200,000 a show so about 800,000 a month for 12 months, that's only 9.6 million. They aren't taping PPVs which is saving money on talent/production, and are selling merch, a little bit off ticket sales and making money off Spike, so how could they have lost 50 million when they don't even spend anything close to that in a year?
TNA has financial troubles and they don't make money, but they are not his black hole that people think either.
