In an interview with Uproxx, AEW President Tony Khan said that he is expecting a big increase when the next round of television rights for AEW are up.
AEW’s deal with TNT and TBS was reviewed in May 2021 when it was announced that Dynamite was moving to TBS plus the addition of four new quarterly specials – Battle of the Belts – on TNT. AEW’s deal with Warner Bros. Discovery runs through the end of this year.
“I expect big increases in the rights for the AEW programs and we’re on a good pace to make a very lucrative deal for the AEW media rights going forward,” Khan said.
AEW has consistently out-performed other shows on the network, especially in the 18-49 demo so a renewal from WBD would likely be the most probable outcome. But the negotiations for a new deal come at a time when WBD is doing major cost-cutting so in reality, it’s very difficult to say what AEW will get from their broadcast partners or if they will be eyeing a move to a different channel.
Asked about a streaming deal as well, Khan noted that they have 174 episodes of Dynamite, 80 episodes of Rampage, and 16 pay-per-views so far, in addition to the vast Ring of Honor library.
“We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of hours of AEW content in our library,” Khan said. “I also purchased Ring of Honor last year, which is a great promotion with over 20 years of history, thousands of hours of video in their library.”
He said AEW owns many great wrestling events, including some which are widely considered some of the best of all time.
“There’s a lot of interest in this library as well as the new weekly content we continue to produce each week, and I do think there’s a lot of demand for the library and it makes a lot of sense for us to try to make that AEW library available to fans all over the world on demand,” Khan said.
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