Rumored AEW TV deal – how this could be bad for the company internationally

The hottest story in pro wrestling outside of WWE is what the next AEW tv deal is gonna look like. We all read the reports over that last few weeks. Some reports it at 110 million dollars per year, some reports 170 millions per years but I don’t want to talk about how much money AEW is gonna get. I want to talk about another point that was rumored to be part of that deal. The fact that WBD is gonna want AEW to produce 12 ppv a year instead of 8 and how this move could be negative for the company especially on the international side.

Let’s just look at the current wrestling ppv market for the big 3. WWE does 12 PLE a year and all those are on peacock in the states and on numerous platform on the international market and will be on Netflix in January. So the price for those show is between 5$ to 15$ and you get a lot of others programming as well.

TNA has their own streaming service and for 25$ a month, you can get all their ppv and you also have access all their back library and if you don’t want to pay the full price, you can get the smaller package at 13$ a month and get all the b-level ppv and the access to all their back library.

AEW doesn’t have such a deal, they currently have 8 ppv a year at 63$ per ppv approximately which is a lot of money to spend if you’re a fan of AEW. So you really have to pick and choose which show you want to watch.

But with this deal, AEW might be able to get all their PPV on Max which is a really good deal for AEW in the states but not for anybody else in the world.

The thing is that unless you got a VPN, nobody can get the HBO Max which so if they started to put all those ppv on Max at a reduce rates, you still gonna charge full price for ppv outside of the states and that were it’s become a negative for them.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of the columns. WWE PLE are between 5 and 15$ per month, TNA is 25$ per month with the TNA app. AEW ppv are 63$ per show so let’s say you’re a big AEW fan and wants to watch all the PPV, that’s maximum 756$ per year which is a lot of money. So we already see the impact that having 8 ppv a year have on the company since most of their ppv buyrate have been down compared to last year, imagine if you have 12 ppv per year, some show are gonna completely tank because fans will pick and choose which one they want to watch.

That’s were I think that AEW could learn from WWE and TNA, pick the 5 or 6 show that you want to be your core ppv and have the really big card and everything and charge full price for those show, then the rest could be b-level show with less matches and charge less for those show that way you give a break to your fanbase wallet and still fulfil the objective of having 12 ppv.

In the end, the whole point of having more ppv’s is to try and grow your audience or at less not lose the audience you have and going with a plan like having 6 A-show and 6 b-show could help at less keep your international fanbase that might not have the money to pay 63$ per month to watch a ppv, especially when all the competition price is way lower then them. So while, TV deal with AEW could be great for them in the states, if you believe some of the stuff that’s been reported and one of the demand from WBD is more ppv, this could be bad for AEW if they don’t adapt they’re marketing plan adequately to keep their international audience from switching to a cheaper product.