Translating Tony Khan’s AEW Television Update

Lost in the SummerSlam talk, MJF-Britt Baker suspension, WrestleMania to London and more was the news that the AEW exclusive TV Rights has expired. That means that we are now four months away from their television deal expiring and we still have no news on what’s going on. AEW is now free to negotiate with any and all television networks that are open to business as well as re-signing with WBD.

Lost in all of this is Tony Khan continuing to tell everyone that things are still “great” and that talks are “great”. That’s just like saying that the economy under Joe Biden is wonderful, there is nothing wrong and all is well.

At this point, I think it’s time to panic and wonder what this means for AEW long term.

The company has been dropping in momentum, ratings, profits, stability and morale over the last four years. Despite continuing to sign free agents, make big splashes, keep doing big matches and bringing in all the talent they can poach, nothing has worked and we are at this point where now Shane McMahon is being teased as a major potential signing. For a company that we all had extremely high hopes for, this is just a bit heartbreaking.

I am going to sift throw the television deal prospects, give an honest look at what is going on, try to give an honest look at what to expect, and tell you what exactly is happening right now. Anyone who has an exact idea of what is going to happen is speculating, that includes me, but safe to say that Tony is living in Funkytown if he thinks things are still great.

(Spoiler Alert; They ain’t Folks)

THE NBA TV DEAL HAS TURNED INTO A CLUSTER FUCK

If you thought that the WBD was going to let the NBA TV deal go quietly, then you had another thing coming. They not only matched the offer, but they have filed a lawsuit to prevent the NBA from allowing Amazon Prime get the winning bid. Even though the NBA accepted the massive streaming service’s bid first, WBD claimed they had matching rights and now are ready for a prolonged battle in court.

In other words, they are ready to spend a lot of money to make sure they don’t lose the golden goose. Money they already don’t kind of have.

For those people who thought that if the WBD lost out on the NBA, they would just give some of that money to AEW, you got another thing coming. They are like the squirrel in Ice Age who is clinging on to the acorn for dear life, willing to die for it. They are already talking about selling off smaller assets to in order to make ends meet and give the company some more cash reserves. If they lose the NBA deal, they are either going to have to sell some more properties, or word on the street is they will pivot to the UFC and go after them in 2025-2026.

MAJORITY OF NETWORKS ARE TIED UP

Take a quick look at the networks right now and try to find a landing spot for All Elite Wrestling if Warner Brothers Discovery passes on them entirely. I am not saying that WBD will do that, but say Tony goes “screw you guys, I am going somewhere else” and does it.

Where does he go that would give him over 100 million?

Netflix already has WWE and isn’t looking to add anymore pro wrestling. NBC and CW also have WWE programming as well so you can take them off the board. Fox just passed on WWE as they felt it wasn’t profitable so I don’t see them going to the alternative model. ABC/Disney is hemorrhaging money and has shown zero interest in bringing in anything that they don’t own and Tony doesn’t want to sell his company. Paramount has just sold their company and once again, they are only producing and airing shows that are made inhouse.

The biggest problem is that pro wrestling in its core is a 52-week live action sports entertainment program. It’s not sports so you can’t put it on a sports network but you can’t put it on streaming services as most people don’t binge watch it like they do say Downton Abbey or Mayor of Kingstown.

If your Tony Khan trying to pitch the show to other networks, how do you sell it? Most networks right now are in stages where they are looking for ready-made hits or easy made programs to put it or to guarantee ratings. After four plus years, AEW has not been able to show that it can do any of that.

Meanwhile as all of this is going on, other networks are being forced to continue to pay their own sports packages more and more, and cut any other shows out that aren’t producing or facing ratings losses.

Which leads to the biggest issue with Tony.

TONY KHAN DOESN’T REALLY WANT TO LEAVE WBD… AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT

Any smart business mogul understands the power of leverage and knowing how to play multiple sides off each other. When to walk away when a deal is bad, when to field multiple offers, and getting as many people involved as possible.

Check out what the WWE did when they put RAW and Smackdown up for sale this past year and the proof is in the pudding. They played things close to the vest, never said anything publicly about where they wanted to go or where they wanted to end up and end the end both RAW and Smackdown got record TV rights deals.

Meanwhile every time Tony Khan opens his mouth, he makes it known he wants to stay with TNT/TBS more than anything in the world.

As one wrestling podcaster commented. “He has given up the leverage because he made it public that he wants to be on the network that WCW was on. And they know it.”

Even if Tony wants that, there should be ZERO reason for him to show it, ZERO. Do not let a bunch of cutthroat sales sharks who make their bones getting saps to take Freudian deals by agreeing to bad terms. They feed of people like Tony Khan to play off emotion and agreeing to give in to nostalgia and to what they want rather than business.

AEW has an overhead of 105 million alone in wrestler salaries and that is not even counting budgets for other production costs, salaries for executives, producers, music rights, travel budgets and other costs that all add up. This is a wrestling promotion that prides itself on being a global federation, not some indy regional outfit. They need all the money they can get, and so they need to get the best deal possible.

Tony from the day that CM Punk signed should have been looking around at other networks and leveraging the ratings for extensions. He should have been coy about TNT and taken a page from Dana White and the WWE and said he was open for business with all parties. This is the television business where there is zero loyalty and the people who were AEW fans at the start had been replaced during the WBD merger. David Zaszlav has shown that he is all about the bottom line and will shred and cut loose everything and anything.

Meanwhile Tony continues to pine for TNT and TBS because he wants to have AEW be the modern-day WCW. He still views AEW as the rival to WWE even though at this point, the war (if there ever was one) is over. WWE has won by viscous 2nd round TKO and AEW is now fighting to keep TNA from passing it as the 2nd biggest pro wrestling promotion in North America.

THE END GAME FOR WBD AND AEW AND WHAT IT WILL ALL MEAN

At this point going off of what I have seen from other sports deal of similar size and ratings I would estimate that AEW getting a slight offer of maybe 55 to 60 million per year. That is what MLS and WNBA is making currently and they are getting similar ratings to what AEW makes with the caveat that both have more games and have are on the upswing.

The bigger question though is going to be what happens with Ring of Honor, Collision and Rampage. Rumors among alot of network execs are that WBD is trying to slash and burn dead weight programming anywhere they see fit. Already they sold off programming such as Batman Caped Crusader, Boomerang, and more.

For all those who keep preaching that AEW will be on the MAX streaming service, there is zero benefit right now for WBD to do that. AEW is not something that help sells people to buy MAX and most people don’t binge watch full episodes of wrestling

People barely watch full episodes of 45 minutes tv episodes and some of you “sickos” want them to watch 60 minutes of two guys trading flippy dippy wrestling holds? Good luck expecting this generation of ADD people to follow that and not get tuned out after 60 seconds.

I think at this point we see AEW Dynamite get renewed for a three hour show in which Tony calls it a “GREAT Win” and then tries to find a way to have the rest either back on the YouTube site.

Make no mistake, this is all leading to some bad times as I worry that a lot of wrestlers and people are going to lose their jobs. At some point Shad Khan is going to start telling his son that he can’t keep sinking money into a money pit. That eventually this pet project has to go away and they need to sell it

Pro wrestling is a business, and in a business, you need to run it as such and the whole TV deal should have been handed off to people who know what the hell they are doing.

Instead, Tony has continued to tell us everything is great while we are still four months out, with no real answers, no clue of what’s going on and more questions and scary possibilities of some dark futures ahead.

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