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TONY KHAN COMMENTS ON WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY'S FUTURE WITH PRO WRESTLING, SAYS 'NO MATTER WHAT' HE WON'T STOP FIGHTING FOR PRO WRESTLING

During tonight's Ring of Honor Final Battle 2023 Post-Show Media Scrum, Tony Khan was asked about the discussion about the future of professional wrestling on Warner Bros. Discovery and as it may pertain to AEW and Ring of Honor.  Khan commented:

"Ring of Honor, we haven't had recently as many, but we've had really good conversations about AEW, even in recent days.   I've had really good talks with Warner Brothers Discovery. We've been with them for several years. It's a really exciting time for AEW. We were the number one show on cable on Wednesday in really what are considered both of the key demographics in TV, which are 54. So it was a great week for AEW. I think we've been putting out some of the best shows we've ever done. Right now we're on this incredible run. Tonight was a great episode of Rampage. In addition to the great wrestling here on ROH Final Battle. The last few episodes of Collision have been tremendous. I think some of the best in the history of that show and also Dynamite has been on a great roll in recent weeks.

I think there's so many great things happening in AEW, so it was great to come in and have the number one rating and be the number one show on cable, which we've done so many times. We've performed incredibly well for Warner Bros. Discovery and, we're very very strong relationship.  I think with  media rights and all the things coming up, everyone has to do their due diligence. It's just part of the TV business, but I think where we stand in a position for AEW to have a huge growth here in 2024.

There's a lot of really exciting things happening that I know Warner Brothers is really excited about that.  We've talked about the advance for All In just being a massive success as we're approaching a $5 million gate for a show that is 8.5 months away and we're so far ahead of where we were. We didn't put the tickets on sale last year until Spring. And now getting on sale ahead of the holiday season.  It's been a huge success. That's going to be tremendous and one of the biggest wrestling shows in the history of the world, following up on the biggest wrestling show in the history of the world just months ago. We've done great show after great show.

It's been a great year for us.  We started out with some great wrestling to start the year, great matches.  Then, we went to Revolution in San Francisco and blew it out, and of course, Ring of Honor.  I think all three of the major Ring of Honor events have been tremendous. This year, including tonight, which was one of my favorite shows of the year, along with Supercard and Death Before Dishonor. I think the Ring of Honor show has been excellent.

In particular, focusing on the Warner Bros. Discovery relationship that you asked about, we've just gone out and crushed it time after time, and this has been a great year for us and the really, All In is the biggest thing we've ever done.   I think it's one of the biggest things anybody's ever done in wrestling, but you have to also look at all the other huge events we've had recently.  Month after month, All In was a great show, but really since Collision started, I think we've been able to do so much with five hours of television.

So, this was a big year for us with Warner Brothers Discovery. They came to us and asked us to go from doing three hours of TV a week on TBS and TNT expanded it to five hours, and that's been very successful.   Collision did a great audience this past weekend. It's been off the last couple weeks.  the shows have been as good as ever, really strong shows. I was really proud in particular, the last few weeks, the Continental Classic, I think has been something really special. So it's a great relationship and it's going very well for us.

I think part of the TV business for both sides is going to be doing their due diligence, and that's just a part of sports and television, really.   Being a part of the NFL and the Premier League, I've seen that process play out with certainly different TV networks looking at different sports and the sports themselves looking at different TV networks.  We've been a part of this multiple times in the NFL. I'm part of the NFL's Fan Engagement and Major Events Committee, so I sit in a select group of people in the NFL. Looking at our different fan metrics, looking at how we're engaged with the fans digitally and in real time, and also planning major events and looking at those trends and I've been able to take a lot of the things I've learned in the world of professional sports, working in the two biggest sports leagues in the world, and being around some of the biggest rights fees in the history of sporting with the Premier League, and in particular the NFL, which is the biggest media superpower in the entire planet and is running hotter and hotter every year and defying gravity and so for what we're doing here and my experiences in the TV business, we stand to be in a really good position going into 2024.

Ring of Honor is a different company than AEW, but it is under my promotional umbrella and it's under the umbrella of the Challenger brand, which is AEW.  What we've created in this family of AEW that now includes Ring of Honor.  We have great partners that we work with, International Pro Wrestling. New Japan Pro Wrestling's been a great partner to us. Now we're working with some of the great Lucha Libre promotions as well and other companies all over the world. I like doing things with Andy at RevPro in England in particular. There's a lot of great companies around the world, but for AEW and I think Ring of Honor, because it falls under my ownership, to be AEW is to be under constant attack. You do a great show and the next day somebody's saying something negative, you do five great shows in a row, somebody says something negative, you break the ticket record for the most tickets ever sold for any wrestling show in the history of the world and somebody has something bad to say about it.

I, just, at this point, I don't worry about it. We just need to go out and do great shows week after week like we did. We were the number one show on cable this week. On Wednesday, we beat every single show on TV on Wednesday out of hundreds and hundreds of shows across hundreds of networks, and we continue doing it and everybody works here is going to be in good position.

I think it's challenging because I've never seen anything quite like wrestling when it comes to Such a large percentage of the business spending such a large percentage of their time on one platform, which is X, formerly Twitter. It's amazing how many people in the wrestling business are on Twitter all the time and to be honest, I understand it because it's good reason because it's engagement because there's such a large percentage of the wrestling fans and you, the wrestling media and opinion makers and the wrestlers themselves and the companies. So many people are on this one platform. It's pretty unique. Because in other sports, it's more evenly distributed. 

To be honest, in the NFL, the biggest platform, and there's always, there's so much engagement across all these platforms. There's been so much growth in TikTok. We're up 300 percent year over year NFL in TikTok. And the amount of football being consumed in TikTok is insane, but that also, I don't want to downplay, what the NFL does on Instagram and Twitter/X, it's incredible, but in wrestling in particular, this one platform, X, it is amazing how much time is spent in the industry on it. And it sometimes becomes, what I've seen, is sometimes a bit of an echo chamber. And also there's a lot of bad faith. There's a lot of bad faith posting on it and you can have a great day in the business.  Do the number one show and people try and tell you didn't do something great or you can break the world record for the most tickets ever sold to any wrestling show ever and have this massive, huge success on pay per view and just hit a home run and the wrestling's great and everything's great and still people are trying to tell you there's some problem with it or some detrimental.

I have news for you. When people talked about the drop count of the show, when people posted the number of people that go through the turnstiles. I've never heard of somebody posting a turnstile count, which is not...there's so many ways to get into a show and there's so many people I talked to that went, were that bought tickets that did not have to go through the turnstiles.  But take that aside for a second. The turnstile count that is so normal for North American pro sports, even if it was 73 out of 81, that would be over the average of a of show rate. For North American pro sports. So if you take the average, like big four pro sports game in America versus like the tickets purchased, and then the people who actually go through the gate, people will talk like that was abnormal or it's and so again, to be AEW no matter how good you do, there will be people coming for you, gunning for you, because that's what this is.

There's a reason that every single person who stepped into my position until now has gone out of business. I'm the only one left. Everybody who has stepped up and put millions of dollars into this and done it week after week. And there's no off season. You do it 52 weeks a year. It's a fight, and that's a credit to the fans.  I know what it is to be a wrestling fan 52 weeks a year. It's hard. And but it's also the most rewarding thing. That's why you can't get away from it for too long. That's why we always come back to it. We're addicted and  it's worth the fight. And I love the fight and I'm never going to stop fighting it no matter what happens.  No matter how things change, it's worth it. It's the fight Jim Crockett fought and Verne Gagne and Ted Turner and so many other people that have tried and  God bless them all. And I'm doing this for all of you and I know all of you are here in spirit. Thank you very much."

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