Tony Khan: AEW getting opportunities ‘bigger than we’ve ever gotten before’ with WBD
Tony Khan has commented on the relationship between AEW and Warner Bros. Discovery.
The AEW President appeared on an episode of Sporticast released on Thursday. During the conversation, Khan spoke about AEW’s key revenue drivers and opportunities for integrations with other WBD properties.
“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, like you said, 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, in-demand pay-per-view providers, internationally on FITE TV streaming,” Khan said.
The AEW President would continue to speak on how important television rights deals are for the growth of the company.
“Our TV deals are, I think, the biggest individual revenue driver and for us, we’ve got this great partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery and we’ve got the rest of this year and next year. They have really been so good to us and I feel like not only was the original leadership so great to take a chance on an unknown company, but then post-merger, the Discovery leadership that’s come in has been so supportive and we’re getting opportunities now with the new management even bigger than we’ve ever gotten before.”
Khan was asked about what changes occurred after the merger between Warner Brothers and Discovery.
“New faces, new people, and they’re great people and we’ve had different management teams over the last few years and this is a new group. Obviously, they have different experiences than the previous management, they have different insights and a different portfolio of IP coming in but also new IP being created by the new property and existing IP that we’ve never really been associated with before.”
“Just in the few months that we’ve been working together, it’s been great getting to know them and work with them and they’ve given us opportunities for integrations and I hope that we’ve done a good job. I think the fact that we’re getting more of them and that they’ve been so positive about the job we’ve done, I guess it went really well. Shark Week is the longest running, most successful, weekly TV event in the history of cable and it is very important to the people at Discovery. I’ve seen it firsthand and it makes total sense, they are very proud of it as they should be and it’s awesome.”
“They gave us the opportunity to promote Shark Week in AEW and develop creative of our own to help further the promotion of Shark Week. Then, based on the success of that, they came right back to us with a huge opportunity, we’ve been working with Warner Media before Warner Discovery for years and never had the opportunity to do integrations with HBO let alone with the #1 show on TV right now, House of the Dragon.”