NJPW Is Banning GIFs, Which Is A Huge Mistake

NJPW is widely seen as the best alternative to WWE for most wrestling fans, given the artistic nature of their stories and their focus on in-ring competition. Many fans have been introduced to the promotion by GIFs on Twitter, but that secondary form of advertising could become obsolete shortly.

Wrestling fans woke up on Thursday morning to some pretty surprising tweets from a few of their favorite GIF accounts.

It seems that NJPW has placed copyright claims on tweets including GIFs from their shows, leading to some of these tweets being pulled.

You can view a screenshot of @MrLARIATO’s removed media tweet below.

Users like @MrLARIATO and @totaldivaseps are among the most popular wrestling Twitter accounts, regularly getting engagement from wrestlers themselves. These GIFs circulate around Twitter, occasionally go viral, and often introduce fans to new promotions like NJPW, AJPW, Pro Wrestling: EVE, SHIMMER, and more.

Both @MrLariato (here) and @NJPWgifs (here) both tweeted that they will no longer be able to tweet out GIFs of NJPW shows to their fans due to this apparent change in policy from NJPW. The promotion had previously been willing to allow these accounts to showcase their work in GIFs as brief snippets, and there would often be credits to the streaming service NJPW World in the tweet. This is because these accounts wanted to bring more eyes to the product, as fans of said promotion.

Although @MrLariato and @NJPWgifs haven’t received a suspension as a result of these copyright claims from NJPW, not everyone has been as fortunate. Noted wrestling GIF-maker @BulletClubItal was suspended, and they were forced to move their account to a different handle.

NJPW hired Harold Meij earlier this year as its new president, and they also have a new General Manager in Michael Craven, who is said to be unpopular among the wrestlers. The changes in leadership go hand-in-hand with NJPW’s increase desire for American expansion, which may result in both changes to the product and to its marketing approach.

While WWE and the NBA are quite open in allowing users to freely share and create GIFs of their product, most American sports properties are not. NJPW is taking a page out of the NFL and MLB’s book, and they are likely being strict with handling GIFs online in order to “force” more fans to subscribe to NJPW World.

The problem is that this approach will be unsuccessful. There are so many wrestling promotions out there that NJPW’s competition is to show hardcore fans that they are the best alternative to WWE, as opposed to, say, Impact Wrestling or somebody smaller. All these promotions are getting free advertising on social media when these GIFs circulate, and they could “encourage” fans to subscribe to watch the full matches instead of checking out a GIF here or there.

NJPW will likely continue to share brief videos on its own social media channels, but there’s something to be said about the creativity of GIF creators using captions or well-placed filters/loops to add to these GIFs. These accounts also tweet about other promotions, so if they provide GIFs of AJPW or NOAH and not NJPW, then who is getting hurt here?

In 2018, social media is generally the place for wrestling fans to broaden their horizons, and NJPW may just be shutting out theirs and hurting content creators who can often add so much more to their product. They use these GIFs to explain storylines and provide callbacks, which leads to more online engagement surrounding these promotions.

GIFs and media tweets are often shared more than blocks of text, so, again, NJPW is losing out on essentially free advertising. If fans don’t visually see the product when they log into social media, how else will they be exposed to the product or slowly “nudged” towards subscribing fully if it’s completely shut out?

It isn’t unprecedented for NJPW to want to ban GIFs on copyright grounds, because so many other companies have taken this step. But unlike, say, the NFL or MLB, there are many more readily-available alternatives that constitute competition for NJPW. If the MLB wants to monopolize the sport and prevent fans from creating GIFs, then they don’t have to worry about competition.

But with so many promotions and limited money to subscribe to these promotions, wrestling fans may turn their attention elsewhere if NJPW isn’t able to pique their interest when they log into a site that they use to interact with the wrestling world at large.

Many fans have voiced their frustration with NJPW’s decision to ban GIFs, and it will be interesting to see if the promotion stands firm or decides that this isn’t necessarily the best strategy to gaining an even larger following.

NJPW has benefited greatly from GIFs if Daryl/Hiromu, Okada vs. Omega, the Bullet Club, Will Ospreay’s moves, and EVIL being EVIL, and I wonder which internal decision-makers chose to take this step (or what data convinced them that this would be a good idea in an ultra-competitive market with a fan base that values creativity and convenience).

(Note: Most of my pieces contain media like videos and GIFs from Twitter. This piece has none of that. See how much drier it is without those breaks where you can watch a cool flip, funny diss, or agonizing submission? Your timeline would have a lot less flavor if the only media on social media came directly from the wrestling promotion itself.)