D’Angeli dives into his role(s) within Anthem Sports & Entertainment.
It was first reported by PWInsider and since confirmed by Lou D’Angeli himself that he is now working as Vice President of Marketing for Anthem Sports & Entertainment with a focus on IMPACT Wrestling and Invicta Fighting Championships among other properties under the company’s banner.
D’Angeli shared with the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast that he had been doing some consulting for IMPACT since February.
So, I have this new job back in the wrestling business which is one of the reasons I delayed speaking with you but I recently came on full-time with IMPACT Wrestling and Anthem & Entertainment. I had been consulting for IMPACT since February and mostly on the live event marketing stuff but we had a lot of conversations and as things kind of progressed, a really good opportunity presented itself for me to be their V.P. of Marketing for IMPACT. Also working with the Invicta MMA business as well which I’m really excited about and then obviously, there are other platforms; Gravitas [Ventures] and FITE and AXS TV and whatnot are all things I’m sure I’ll be involved in. They’re not within my purview per se, but there’s a lot of opportunities there across promotionally and things like that frankly I think are great opportunities for IMPACT, also for Invicta but it’s a good family of companies all together that really kind of can feed off each other so I saw a lot of opportunity there. Coming from WWE, ECW, Cirque du Soleil and whatnot, there’s always been multiple things you can market within these companies and I found a lot of synergies in the past and I think the same thing is going to be here. So pretty exciting time.
He went on to comment on his working relationship thus far with IMPACT Executive Vice President Scott D’Amore. Their relationship is close and D’Angeli predicts that will only get better over time. He added that they feed off one another and D’Amore is supportive of his ideas.
Scott [D’Amore] and I have a very close relationship so far and I anticipate that just getting better as we go. We’ll feed off each other a lot. He has great marketing ideas and very supportive of some of the things I’m trying to do as well so, I see nothing but positivity as we go and onward.
In a follow-up question, D’Angeli was asked to dive into the specifics of his role as V.P. of Marketing. One of the examples he used was using IMPACT Wrestling talents to do local advertisements for upcoming shows and having Scott D’Amore, Gisele Shaw and Rosemary present at San Diego Comic Con.
From the IMPACT side, it’s everything to promote the live events as well as the brand, as well as tune in pay-per-view, merchandise, digital, P.R, social, it’s a large scope. With Invicta [Fighting Championships], similar, just not as far along yet but also with IMPACT too, it’s like how we use our talent, how we use our talent assets like social media, what can we do more for live events. For instance, I just started having local promo shot again like the old house show promos like, ‘Hey, I’m coming to Las Vegas’ and blah, blah, blah, blah and those are just easy things that don’t sound complex but they have a good effect and in the past — it’s a very, very small team and not everybody can be doing everything, right? And I think things like that, start using the best people we have to promote us and that’s the talent and when we’re going into cities, you’ll probably see from watching the show, we don’t have all our matches — the way the storylines run, the TV runs, you might not be getting matches until like a couple days before the show but that doesn’t mean we can’t be telling people these guys are gonna be there and that’s kind of the goal with some of the stuff. If Masha’s gonna be in Las Vegas and we know she’s gonna have a match, we probably know who it’s against but we can’t say it yet, it’s still letting people know and I think that’s a lot of the stuff. The talent reach is enormous. There was something I did — or we did, sorry — like a month-and-a-half ago, pushing some match announcements out for one of the shows and within six, seven talent alone, you’re hitting two million people because so many of them have big followers so look, it’s a lot of that stuff. It’s maximizing opportunities, growing the business, seeing what else we can do to get eyes on the brand and brand partnerships, extremely easy to work with which I think is a plus so a lot of that’s come to fruition… We just did something at Comic Con in San Diego, you know? Had a red carpet event, had Scott [D’Amore], Rosemary, Gisele [Shaw] there, did a bunch of content. Like those are the types of things that I want to be doing and bringing those partnerships along. They’re all the partnerships I’ve had in the past with different companies but, no better place than now and here.
Tonight’s episode of IMPACT on AXS is the go-home before Victory Road on September 23rd. POST Wrestling will have coverage of tonight’s show.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
