Tony Khan pulls back the curtain.
The AEW President was asked about when he decided to launch the new wrestling promotion during an interview with Locked on NFL. Khan reveals that he had the idea back in 2018 after having a brief conversation with then TNT/TBS President Kevin Reilly, who told Khan that he had previously bid on media rights for WWE before WWE ended up on FOX.
It’s something I started working on in 2018. The idea to launch AEW, a lot of things came together, and I believed there were enough great wrestlers that would be available in the beginning of 2019 to launch a wrestling league. In April 2018, I started working on this. I was at a party in Beverly Hills on a Friday night. I saw my friend, who at the time was the President of TBS and TNT [Kevin Reilly]. I walked up to him, I was visiting with him a little bit, and I said, ‘Kevin, are you looking at bidding on wrestling TV rights?’ He was, and he was looking to bid on SmackDown. He told me what he was willing to pay, he said, $150 to $175 million a year. I follow the industry closely, so I knew that it was going to go over $200 million, and it did. I pointed out, ‘I don’t know if that’s going to get it done. For a lot less than that, we could launch a new wrestling league on TNT and eventually TBS, too.’ That’s what happened.
AEW would officially launch in 2019 and premiere on TNT that October. You can check out Khan’s full interview here.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
