Tony Khan’s Heavy AEW Workload Criticized

Tony Khan does it all in AEW and perhaps that’s not a good thing for his company.

Ever since Tony Khan announced the creation of AEW in January 2019, he has been very hands on with his company. Khan is AEW’s Owner, General Manager, and Head of Creative (or “booker” in insider wrestling terms) who determines who wins and loses the match while also creating storylines for fans to consume.

As the son of billionaire Shad Khan, Tony is also heavily involved in other family businesses like running the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars and the Fulham football club in the English Premier League. The family has several other businesses also.

While leading AEW’s creative team, Tony Khan surrounds himself with a lot of different people who contribute ideas to the show, but ultimately it is Tony who has the final call.

AEW signed a new TV/streaming deal with Warner Bros Discovery in late 2024 that will ensure they will be around for at least three more years, but some business metrics are trending in the wrong direction.

In recent months, AEW decided to run smaller arenas due to crowd sizes getting smaller in the second half of 2024. Instead of doing Dynamite in 10,000-seat buildings, they have smaller crowds with under 3,000 fans most weeks and the venues are smaller as well.

Dave Meltzer Suggests Tony Khan’s Workload Is Insane

It was recently reported that Tony Khan was “back in the weeds” of AEW in terms of the creative direction of the company.

Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer mentioned Khan being more involved with AEW’s product while also suggesting that perhaps Khan is doing too much work and he may need to delegate more.

Khan has pushed getting more into the weeds (detail work) of the booking. Really, given his schedule, he really should leave some of that detail work to others and concentrate on the big picture as well as the business end. The reality is CEO, GM and booker are three different full-time jobs and him doing all three while being owner and having jobs with the Jaguars and Fulham is insane.

In addition to AEW, Tony Khan also owns and books the ROH promotion and is looking at streaming options for that brand.