All Elite Wrestling launched to much fanfare in 2019 with three pay-per-view events taking place over that summer before the debut episode of Dynamite aired on TNT on Wednesday, October 2nd.
The success of the show saw WarnerMedia extend its contract with the company through to 2023 as well as commit to launching another show on Friday nights which was later revealed to be Rampage.
In January 2022, Dynamite moved to TNT’s sister channel, TBS, while Rampage remained on TNT. Another vote of confidence from the All Elite brand’s TV partner saw them add four Battle Of The Belts specials being added to TNT’s schedule.
Tony Khan addresses AEW’s future
With the company’s media rights coming up for renewal soon, AEW President Tony Khan spoke to Uproxx about the future of the brand, saying he is confident they are in a place to make “a very lucrative deal”.
“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 also addressed the possibility of launching a streaming service akin to the WWE Network, noting that they now have “hundreds of hours” of both All Elite Wrestling and – since buying the company in 2022 – Ring of Honor content.
“We’ve done 174 episodes of Dynamite, 80 episodes of AEW Rampage, our 17th pay-per-view event will be March 5 in Revolution, so we’ve done hundreds and hundreds of hours of AEW content in our library.
“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. So overall, AEW has access to so many great wrestling events, including some events that are widely considered to be some of the best wrestling events of all time.”
Khan went on to say it would make sense for him to make the libraries available to fans on demand.
“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.”
When it comes to the future of Ring of Honor, Khan says he wants to continue running it as a separate entity from AEW but still part of the same “metaverse of pro wrestling”.
“I want to run them as separate promotions that exist in the same metaverse of pro wrestling along with New Japan Pro Wrestling and some of our other partners.”
H/T to Uproxx for the above transcription