More Details On AEW’s New TV Deal And PPV Streaming Options
There is more known about what AEW’s next TV deal will entail as well as some of the pay-per-view options that the company has.
Anybody that watches AEW programming knows that the company’s Owner Tony Khan loves making “huge announcements” as much as he loves booking titles. This past week on Dynamite, Tony hinted at a major announcement coming next Wednesday, which is also when Warner Bros. Discovery (the company that owns TNT & TBS which airs AEW programming) will make an announcement regarding AEW as well.
It has been reported that CM Punk is set to return to AEW for the new Saturday TNT show called Collision on June 17th. The announcement from Khan and WBD is expected to be the announcement of Collison. Whether they specifically mention CM Punk as well is not known right now, but they certainly could do that.
In an update on the situation, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported that all AEW programming will be on WBD-owned channels.
“What is known is that the deal will encompass all television and streaming programming that has the AEW banner, but not ROH, which is considered a separate company. That would be five hours of wrestling programming per week, the two hours on Wednesday on TBS, one hour on Friday on TNT and the two hours on Saturday on TNT, as well as any and all spinoff programming other than Being the Elite, which is expected to be kept as something separate since it’s a property owned by the Young Bucks.”
As he continued, Meltzer wrote about the possibility of AEW programming also going to a streaming service and how it could affect the company’s pay-per-view business.
“The big question involves PPV. Will it remain as it is? Will it be part of a streaming deal? Will that streaming deal be a joint new project by WBD and AEW, similar to the joint deal with TV Asahi and NJPW for New Japan World? Will it be on Discovery + or MAX? Will the deal be only for domestic rights, or will it be worldwide? AEW probably takes in about $2.5 million per show from its five PPV events per year, one of which is a joint venture with New Japan Pro Wrestling.”
“So if there is a deal involving moving to streaming, and noting until recently the PPV numbers had grown every year, any movement should come with it with a guarantee of a minimum of $15 million for PPV and really that’s almost giving up since a move to $60 would be inevitable with UFC at $80 and big boxing at $85 and the price constantly rising except AEW has stayed steady.”
“It’s not worth selling if you don’t factor in some growth if the deal is multiple years, so I’d value domestic PPV as worth $3.5 million per event if the company is going to sell it to WBD to stream. There is also the question of how many PPVs to do, as WWE, UFC and Impact all do 12 on streaming components.”
When CM Punk returns on Collision, AEW plans on calling it “The Second Coming” since it’s his first time on AEW programming since last September at All Out.