AEW President Tony Khan recently joined Sporticast for an in-depth conversation about all things pro-wrestling, including some updates from the business side of AEW, and how he feels about his current relationship with Warner Bros Discovery. That and more from Khan’s interview can be found in the highlights below.
On partnering up with DraftKings, Bleacher Report, FITE, and Warner Bros:
“This is my third TV deal (coming up). I’m on my second TV deal. Live events is a huge revenue driver, merchandising is a huge revenue driver. We have big sponsorships now, DraftKings has come in and been an amazing sponsor for AEW this year. Also, what we have, media rights is a big part of it. Pay-per-view is a big part of it. We’ve been selling pay-per-views, working with Bleacher Report, InDemand providers, internationally, FiteTV streaming. Our TV deals are our biggest individual revenue driver. For us, we have this great partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery and have the rest of this year and next year. They have been so good to us. Not only was the original leadership so great to take a chance on an unknown company, but post-merger, the Discovery leadership that has come in has been so supportive and we’re getting opportunities now with the new management even bigger than we’ve ever gotten before.”
How positive his relationship is with WB and how they may be getting even more programming:
“New faces, new people, and they’re great people. We’ve had different management teams over the last few years and this is a new group. Obviously, they have different experiences and different insights and a different portfolio of IP coming in, but also new IP being created by the new property and existing IP we’ve never really been associated with before. Just in the few months we’ve been working together, it’s been great getting to know them and working with them. They’ve given us opportunities for integrations and I hope we’ve done a good job. The fact that we’re getting more of them and they’ve been so positive about the job we’ve done, it went really well.”
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)