Anthem executive Ed Nordholm spoke with Sports Illustrated about the debate with Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy over the “Broken Universe” intellectual property. After restating his argument that the company owns the intellectual property, Nordholm closed by saying that he is not open to further discussions on the matter.
“I’ve stopped thinking about this,” Nordholm said. “We have a show to put on, and a company and a brand. We’ve got things on our plate that are more important than sorting out the ‘Broken Brilliance.’ I made a genuine effort to resolve something to benefit the Hardys as a goodwill gesture to Matt. It didn’t reach a conclusion and we’re moving on. We’re not going back to it, I’m not interested in opening a new dialogue, I’m not interested in opening another conversation about it. We made our best effort, it didn’t happen, and I’m not going to negotiate all over again.” Read the full interview at SI.com.
Powell’s POV: The question I have for Nordholm, Anthem, and GFW executives is whether this was all worth it. I posed that question to Bruce Prichard and Dutch Mantell during the conference call today and neither man had much to say on the matter. My opinion from the moment this debate started is that whether legally in the right or not, this would be a big loss for Anthem/GFW in the court of public opinion, and thus it wasn’t worth it for a company desperately trying to regain lost viewers. At the time, I know that GFW officials believed it would be a temporary PR hit, yet here we are all these months later and it’s still a source of negative publicity for the company.
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