Indie Wrestling Promotion Fails to Impress Investors on ‘Dragons Den’

Think an indie wrestling company is a good investment? Andrew Bowers, owner of British promotion NORTH Wrestling, appeared on the latest episode of Dragons' Den in an attempt to raise £60,000 for his business.

Dragons' Den is a long-running British TV show where entrepreneurs pitch their small businesses to a panel of potential investors. It's the show that spawned Shark Tank -- the extremely popular American series.

The segment began with an impromptu match between Man Like DeReiss and Rory Coyle, which got a decent pop from the Dragons. After DeReiss pinned Coyle clean, Bowers gave his pitch for NORTH Wrestling.

"I fell in love with wrestling when I was a kid," Bowers said to the Dragons. "I used to sit on the couch with my dad and we used to watch it on a Saturday morning. As a teen, I used to go to live wrestling shows and as an adult, I take my kids to wrestling shows too. So eight years ago, I started NORTH Wrestling."

Bowers' pitch to the panel was £60,000 for 25 percent of his company. However, the NORTH Wrestling owner began to lose the investors once he revealed the company only made £2,000 in net profit the previous year.

Longtime Dragon Deborah Meaden actually has experience in putting on wrestling shows in the past. "In my [Weststar] holiday parks we used to put on wrestling matches every week for many many years, but they slowly dwindled," she said. "Less and less attendance, and actually at one point we just thought... brace yourself for these words... this is old fashioned. This is not a thing of the future and it's not attracting people."

Meaden and the other Dragons agreed that with top wrestlers leaving Britain for WWE and AEW, the Isles just didn't have the star power or a large enough population to sustain a local promotion.

"When I look at this business, I go, 'Actually, to win here we have to cultivate broad cultural demand in wrestling again. Honestly, to win that race, you'd need tens of millions of dollars potentially,'" said businessman Steven Bartlett, who grew up a wrestling fan. "With £60,000 here, I think we could accelerate this business, but not to a point where I'd make a return as an investor, so I'm going to say that I'm out."

Though NORTH Wrestling didn't gain any new investors, Bowers exited the Den in good spirits, and hopefully with some good promotion for the indie league. Check out the full Dragons' Den segment below.