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AEW Reportedly Interested In Buying WWE And Merging Two Wrestling Companies

By John Canton • Published 12th January 2023
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The rumors continue to persist regarding a potential WWE sale and a new report suggests that AEW is interested in making an attempt to buy WWE.

As the year turned to 2023, WWE quickly grabbed the headlines with the news of Vince McMahon returning to the company as the Executive Chairman with the intention to sell the company.

In addition to Vince wanting to sell WWE, his daughter Stephanie resigned as WWE Chairwoman and Co-CEO, which leaves Nick Khan as the lone WWE CEO working along with Vince.

On Thursday evening, WWE also announced that they have hired a financial advisor, legal advisor and strategic communications advisor to support WWE’s management team.

There was also a story credited to Barrons, which is a sister publication to the Wall Street Journal and a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, that reported that AEW Owners Shahid and Tony Khan (Tony is the AEW President/GM and in charge of the on-screen product) are in “the pool of potential buyers for WWE.”

That’s not the only AEW-related story because Alex Sherman of CNBC reported this about the Khan family having an interest in buying WWE.

“All Elite Wrestling, a professional wrestling league owned by the Khan family, is interested in merging with World Wrestling Entertainment, according to people familiar with the matter.”

The Khan family also owns the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars and the Premier League’s Fulham F.C. along with other businesses like auto parts manufacturer Flex-N-Gate. The story notes that the Khan family could “partner with a strategic media company to share the intellectual property while merging the wrestling leagues.”

Wrestling fans that are familiar with AEW know that their TV shows Dynamite and Rampage air on TBS and TNT respectively, which are owned by AEW has a TV carriage rights agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).

The story continued: “The Khans are open to discussing a potential role for McMahon, 77, after a sale but haven’t yet had those talks, one of the people said. It’s unclear what type of job McMahon would want with WWE after a sale, but WWE is a much larger and more established organization than AEW.”

It was also noted that Shahid Khan has a reported net worth of about $7.56 billion based on a recent Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Meanwhile, WWE shares are up over 30% so far this year. The current market capitalization for WWE is more than $6.6 billion and they had $1.28 billion of revenue in the last year.

The author of the CNBC article was Alex Sherman, who noted that while the Khan family may want to try to buy WWE, it’s unknown if Vince McMahon and WWE would ever want to sell to a bid made by the owners of AEW. Sherman also wrote that the Khan family buying WWE seems like a “long shot” at this point.