Tony Khan was on the latest AEW Unrestricted Podcast where he talked about several different topics. Some of the topics he covered was AEW’s television deal, TV revenue and how important it is to wrestling companies, AEW’s PPV success, the original name he had come up with for a wrestling company, plus much more. He also talked about his pitch to TBS, and TNT president Kevin Reilly. We have included a few of the highlights below as well as the whole podcast.
Tony Khan on his original name for a wrestling company:
“It wasn’t exactly AEW to begin with. Actually, my first idea was something first called World’s Best Wrestling. Because I was trying to — which you know, at the end of the day, it’s a similar meaning to All Elite Wrestling. Trying to say we’re doing great wrestling, right?”
Tony Khan on AEW’s TV revenue compared to PPV:
“I had approached Kevin Reilly, my good friend. When I walked over to him, it was during a time period that … at that point, there were WWE TV rights being bid out, and they were bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars on TV rights. So as we looked at it, I was saying, ‘Okay well, all of a sudden now the economics of wrestling have flipped.’ The TV show has become such an important [thing]. Everyone who’s watched wrestling knows that those TV shows are a huge part of it, but they’re more important than ever before. If you look at the economic pyramid of a wrestling company, the TV show is really the prime dollar which hasn’t always been the case. It used to be, people used to look at TV as something you would use almost to promote your live events and PPVs. Those are not the driving forces.”
Tony Khan on their PPV success:
“Now, we’ve done well and our PPVs have been successful and Double or Nothing’s the biggest PPV anybody outside of WWE has done in decades. Not just since the end of WCW, but as Tony [Schiavone] will tell you, the WCW PPVs at the end were not doing as well. And that’s pretty great, because we came into a PPV universe that people said was decimated and not a true reliable revenue stream anymore, but for us it’s been a good revenue stream. But still for us by far, our biggest economic driver is TV..”
Thank you to 411mania.com for the transcription.
