YouTube Struggle With Wrestling Continues Following WCPW Event

For many indie promotions around the world, one of the primary ways their talent can be shared is through video-sharing website YouTube. However, following a wave of backlash from advertisers on the site, wrestling as a whole appears to be done for.

Recent backlash from advertisers on YouTube has caused the video-sharing website to be more strict on what is ‘advertiser-friendly,’ and that sadly includes wrestling.

The struggle with wrestling on YouTube continued last night as wrestling promotion WCPW held their latest show. Titled ‘Fight Back,’ the aim of the free show was to promote the idea that wrestling brings people together, as opposed to hate speech, as indicative of the promo WCPW general manager Adam Blampied gave.

In the promo Blampied gave, he explains that the company is running ‘Fight Back’ at a loss, with the fans who paid their tickets directly paying for the wrestlers who worked the show. They wanted to create the show as a statement because YouTube has deemed all wrestling content to not be ‘advertiser-friendly,’ meaning that they cannot make sufficient money to support the promotion running weekly shows as they have been doing for the past year with ‘WCPW Loaded,’ which was available on their various YouTube channels.

The promotion would run their show via a live stream on their YouTube channel, but after it aired, YouTube took the video down. As WCPW would later tweet, and as viewers who attempted to click on the video would see, the reason the video was taken down was due to a ‘violation of YouTube’s policy on spam and deceptive practices.’

Not only is Wrestling not monetizable on YouTube… apparently it's not welcome at all. We have now been issued with a "Strike". #FightBack pic.twitter.com/MAPpKVv1S0

— DEFIANT Wrestling (@DEFIANTwres) June 3, 2017

They would also tweet that moving forward, they will not be able to live stream on their channels as they have the past year as they would quote YouTube in saying that their ability to have live streams has been revoked.

"Your ability to live stream has been revoked."

— DEFIANT Wrestling (@DEFIANTwres) June 3, 2017

At the time of writing, WCPW has uploaded their ‘Fight Back’ show to the promotion’s Facebook account for free, as was the intent of the show. They also uploaded it on their website ‘Whatculture Extra’ section, which is a paid subscription service for additional content. Many promotions have this same structure.

It is unknown at this time specifically what it was that caused the ‘strike,’ but it is estimated this could be due to the logo the show used, which was based on the original YouTube logo.

It should be noted that WCPW isn’t the only wrestling promotion to be affected by this change on YouTube, as all wrestling promotions were affected, right through from small local indie promotions right up to WWE, despite WWE being a kid-friendly PG product.

Wrestling fan ‘Heelbook’ took to Change.org recently to start a petition to get wrestling back on the ‘advertiser-friendly’ list so all wrestling channels and promotions can continue to make money from their content. If you have yet to sign the petition and are in support of wrestling content being available on YouTube, you can sign the petition here.

Recently, Dolph Ziggler has been in some drama with YouTube personality Trisha Paytas after he flaked on their date due to having a busy schedule and being tired, causing her to create a YouTube video on ‘exposing’ him.

Hate Speech Tears People Apart... Wrestling Brings People Together

Editor’s Note:

I hate this so much, as I watch a lot of my wrestling content through YouTube or subscription services. It is terrible to know that something we love so much in wrestling is considered so bad that promotions can’t make money from their content being on YouTube. This severely effects so many promotions. Perhaps to a company as big as WWE this wouldn’t be as bad, but they wouldn’t deserve this in the first place. For those who have yet to sign the petition, I highly suggest you do so.

What do you think of this situation? Should wrestling be advertiser-friendly? Let us know in the comments below or over on our Facebook page or Twitter account. Additionally, you can find me on Twitter at @SOSNH1995.