Tony Khan: People in TV would kill for AEW’s numbers

The AEW president was a guest on Wrestling Observer Radio this weekend.

During the 90-minute discussion available now for subscribers, Tony Khan told our own Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez that the media rights deal his company lands is going to be a “great deal for AEW.” However, he noted that there are several items still on the table in discussions.

“It’s a very complex conversation. There’s a lot of things to be talked about,” Khan said.

One item for discussion concerns AEW’s pay-per-view model and the potential for the promotion’s major events to be featured on WBD’s streaming service MAX or potentially the proposed new sports streaming service, Venu Sports.

“In addition to MAX, obviously, a lot of people are talking about Venu Sports. That’s a really unique opportunity,” Khan said of the proposed joint streaming service that would be owned by Disney, Fox, and WBD.

“I think (Venu Sports) could be something we could be part of and it’s a really interesting conversation. That’s a whole new conversation and that’s a new world. There’s a lot of really interesting and exciting things but what’s really cool is I don’t think that Warner Bros has had such a hands-on boss who has overseen a studio like this since Ted Turner was here at TNT and TBS like we have with David (Zaslav). There is a supreme commander at the top of Warner Bros Discovery and he loves AEW and I have a great relationship with him and I think it’s going to go a long way towards really keeping something that is very important to me alive, which is wrestling on TBS, TNT. When we brought it back, I always said this is an American institution, there should be wrestling on these channels.”

Khan continued to say he feels the same way about ITV in England.

“I also had the same great conversations in England with the amazing people at ITV. I really feel that way also about England, there should be wrestling on ITV.”

Khan expanded on how important having the WBD CEO’s support of AEW is to the company.

“That’s a really good thing for the company to have, is the support of the head of the studio, one of the top, most powerful people in Hollywood who loves AEW, loves what we’re doing. And has gotten a look under the hood of AEW also. Very publicly, it’s not a secret, that they’ve also seen what WWE is doing and analyzed it, done the comps, and I think there’s a very glass-half-full story to that which is they stuck with us and they want to be with us. They had a chance to make a deal with someone else and they didn’t.”

Earlier in the conversation, Khan was asked about doing three-hour blocks of programming and said he’s “open to these things” but also mentioned that AEW Rampage ratings on Friday nights have been up of late.

Khan also touted the strength of the numbers AEW has done throughout its five-year run.

“We’ve had historically really strong numbers and maintain really strong numbers in TV and that is the thing we need to do is keep doing what we’re doing because the numbers we have are numbers people in TV would kill to have. And I really need to focus on doing good shows for AEW, not about what the competition is doing. I think that in this case our competition going out ahead of us and getting good media rights deals was a positive for us and actually is good for us because we have very good historical comps, and these comps are very favorable for us. So that’s one thing I’ve done, a ton of market research and retained top analysts and data scientists and am looking at this stuff.”

“Most TV shows would kill for our ratings and demos. And in sports, we skew really young,” he continued.

The full interview is available here for subscribers.