After a cryptic post yesterday, Major League Wrestling (MLW) has announced that they have inked a broadcast deal.
Starting tonight at 8 p.m. ET, MLW Fusion will stream (for free) live on Tubi and new episodes will premiere each Thursday at the same time.
“Wrestling should be easy to find and free to watch,” said Bauer, the founder and CEO of Major League Wrestling to The Hollywood Reporter. “We built MLW around that, no paywalls, no subscription barriers, nothing standing between a fan and the show, and Tubi shares that same fan-first philosophy at scale. Starting Sept. 17, Tubi’s 110 million monthly active users have a front row seat on Thursday nights to the hardest hitting hour in pro wrestling, and it won’t cost a dime.”
Back in 2021, MLW had deal to air archival programming as it worked on a deal for new programming. MLW stated in an antitrust lawsuit that they believe WWE (Vince McMahon) was not please and after airing one program VICE shut down talks with MLW.
MLW also alleged that WWE did the same thing when it tried to ink a deal with Tubi.
In the suit, MLW accused WWE of:
Interfering with MLW’s television and streaming agreements;
Attempting to prevent competitors from getting media deals;
Interfering with the VICE and Tubi relationships;
Attempting to poach MLW talent;
Using WWE’s media contracts to restrict other wrestling promotions from appearing on certain networks/platforms
In 2023, MLW and WWE settled. The case was dismissed with prejudice. WWE/TKO later disclosed that it paid MLW $20 million to settle the lawsuit.
