Chris Jericho: AEW’s Max deal is ‘the way of the future’

Chris Jericho believes AEW content streaming on Max is an important step for the company.

As part of AEW’s new media rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, Dynamite and Collision are now both simulcast live on Max in addition to their regular television channels. AEW pay-per-views will also be available to purchase on Max starting at some point this year.

Jericho told The Takedown that he believes streaming deals like this are the way of the future. He thinks cable television will “pretty much go away” at some point, so having a foothold on Max is key for AEW.

“Well, it’s kind of the way, the way of the future,” Jericho said. “I think cable television as a whole will pretty much go away at some point, because there is so much emphasis on streaming. Just the quality of the picture, the fact you can watch it whenever you want to. All of those things are such a positive. So even though we have such a great relationship with Warner Brothers and TNT and TBS, I think it’s very important that we were able to move on to Max.”

Viewership information for the Max simulcasts of Dynamite and Collision has not been made publicly available. Last week, Fightful reported that AEW content “has been among the top streamed live sports events” on Max since the Dynamite and Collision simulcasts began.

“The whole business is based on television revenue nowadays. Before it was pay-per-view and it was live attendance, and it was all that sort of thing, and now it solely rests on the television deal you can get. We’ve had ups and downs as far as ratings and demos go, but we still always do really, really well on cable. If we’re not number one or two, we’re in the top five, and at the very least the top 10, and that’s out of 1000s of shows.

In his interview with The Takedown, Jericho said that — with AEW’s new media rights deal in place — the promotion can now really concentrate on furthering the things it does well and improving the things that can be improved.

“The whole business is based on television revenue nowadays. Before it was pay per view and it was live attendance, and it was all that sort of thing, and now it solely rests on the television deal you can get. We’ve had ups and downs as far as ratings and demos go, but we still always do really, really well on cable. If we’re not number one or two, we’re in the top five, and at the very least the top 10, and that’s out of 1000s of shows,” he said.

“So, it’s a very valuable property and I think we all knew that within AEW and anybody Tony surrounds himself with, but there’s a lot of pundits and critics that still to this day don’t see how valuable AEW is and how much it’s growing. The television deal is $185 million a year. I mean, that’s next level. That’s pretty much four times that we were getting. So, I think that there was a sigh of relief, not that we didn’t know we could get it, but just now that it’s locked in, now we can get to work and really concentrate on the things that we need to concentrate on, both to continue upward ascension in some areas and to improve in others.”

Jericho is the current Ring of Honor World Champion in addition to competing on AEW programming.