Despite declining viewership numbers over the years, AEW programming continues to demonstrate strong performance in the key 18 to 49 demographic and consistently ranks in the top 5 for cable programming on the nights it airs, often only trailing behind major sporting events.
As we’ve been reporting here on eWn, AEW’s current media rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery is due to expire at the end of 2024, and the company is actively engaged in negotiations for a new contract.
During a recent appearance on Wrestling Observer Radio, AEW President Tony Khan provided details regarding the ongoing negotiations and AEW’s performance metrics. He said,
“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.”
Khan has previously indicated that AEW is well-positioned for substantially renewing its media rights with Warner Bros. Discovery.
