AEW‘s current media rights deal is coming to an end which means talk of where they will end up next is ramping up. Currently, the company is in an exclusive negotiating window with its current partner Warner Bros. Discovery whom they signed with back in 2019. Past reports suggest that if the two sides can come to an agreement, the news will likely come in the next few months. It is currently believed across the industry that Warner Bros. Discovery will lose their NBA rights deal after this season which could spell great things for AEW, as they will likely be looking to fill the void.
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AEW President Tony Khan has made it clear over the last few years that he’s content with the way things are going for AEW and WBD. However, Khan isn’t naive to the fact that many naysayers have pointed out the similarities between the two major promotions — AEW and WWE. Currently Khan’s focus is to steer the ship back on course to honor its original ethos of being an alternative wrestling company.
WWE has seen immense success over the last few months. From the fall of 2024 until the remainder of the year, SmackDown will return to USA Network with WWE Raw for the first time in several years. Then, next January, WWE’s multi-billion dollar deal with Netflix to bring WWE Raw and other original programming to the streaming service will go into effect. Khan acknowledges that the success of WWE is great for wrestling as a whole, including his own company.
“I really need to focus on doing good shows for AEW, not about what competition is doing,” Khan told The Wrestling Observer. “I think that, in this case, our competition going out ahead of us and getting good media rights deals was a positive for us and actually is good for us because we have very good historical comps and these comps are very favorable for us. So that’s one thing I’ve done is a ton of market research and retain top analysts and data scientists.
“Most TV shows would kill for our ratings and demos. And in sports, we skew really young. And instead of focusing on when Kenny Omega and MJF and Adam Cole were on the show every week, in addition to all these other wrestlers, and Mox was here every week and everything was running perfect, then yes, we’ve had these demos that are, you know, even better than what we’ve had, but yet, right now, we maintain some of the best demos in sports.”
Stay tuned to Comicbook for updates on AEW.
