Tony Khan comments on AEW's performance on television.
Though the viewership numbers have dropped over the years, AEW programming still performs strongly in the 18 to 49 demo and is often in the top 5 on the night for cable, only losing out to major sporting events.
AEW's media rights deals with Warner Bros Discovery is set to expire at the end of 2024 and the company is currently negotiating a new deal.
Appearing on Wrestling Observer Radio, Khan gave more insight into the negotiations and AEW's numbers.
"The most important key point is, for us, we've had historically strong numbers and maintained strong numbers in TV. That is the thing we need to do. Keep doing what we're doing because the numbers that we have are numbers people at TV would kill to have. I really need to focus on doing good shows for AEW, not about what the competition is doing. In this case, our competitor going out ahead of us and getting good media rights deals was a positive for us and is good for us because we have good historical comps. These comps are favorable for us. I've done a ton of market research, retained top analysts and data scientists. Most TV shows would kill for our ratings and demos. In sports, we skew really young. It's important to focus on that. I think it's going to be a really good summer for us. We had really good growth through last summer too. Getting back to the best of what AEW does is important to me and historically, we've done a lot of that in the summer," said Khan.
Khan has previously said that AEW is poised for a big media rights renewal.
AEW will hold its annual AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door event on June 30. Fans can check out the lineup for the show by clicking here.
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