Earlier on Monday, sports media journalist John Ourand from Puck News wrote about the AEW TV rights deal in his newsletter, The Varsity. Ourand hasn't written much about the deal previously, so it was a surprise to see the AEW and Warner Brother Discovery item lead off his Starting Five section.
He wrote that WBD CEO David Zaslav has been spending the money he saved on not securing the NBA's rights on other sports, including the French Open and Mountain West Football, and included AEW in that grouping of "sports."
Now I’m told that Warner Bros. Discovery is close to finalizing a package to renew Shahid and Tony Khan’s All Elite Wrestling. (The Khans, of course, also own the Jacksonville Jaguars.) Insiders are telling me that a formal announcement could come as soon as next week, barring any last-minute challenges. It looks like it will be a four-year deal (three years guaranteed, plus an option), and the $170 million per year number floating around wrestling message boards is apparently in the ballpark.
I think most had assumed that the deal could be five years, so these terms are the first we've seen in print and the $170 million per year was definitely floating around, though I'd also heard $150 million from others.
Ourand had two other interesting pieces of information.
According to the parameters of the agreements, AEW matches will air on TNT, TBS, and TruTV twice a week—further evidencing Zaz’s strategy of making the latter two networks more valuable and sports-oriented in the cable bundle as the potency of TNT declines sans professional basketball rights.
This isn't exactly clear but it could be that TruTV runs reruns of AEW programming when the new deal begins. It could also mean a simulcast or Manningcast-like shows as well.
His last nugget was about deals outside of the WBD ecosystem.
AEW is also pitching another package, primarily to broadcast channels. There’s no timetable for when AEW will start to push that deal.
Presumably, this is the Fox Sports 1 deal that has been discussed, which could jump the overall sum of their TV deals close to $200 million. Also, reporter B. J. Bethal, who has been on top of this deal, and joined me last month on The Wrestling Re-Podders, had an interesting tweet on Monday night.
AEW's deal was likely helped by Charter agreeing to keep carrying WBD last week for the same carriage fee it had when the network had the NBA.Expect FS1 not to be the first collaboration with a WBD contracted show.
— B. J. Bethel (@BJBethelTweets) September 17, 2024
What about what wasn't in Ourand's reporting? There was no mention directly about AEW MAX, which we've heard rumors about from my co-host on We're Live, Pal, Andrew Zarian. On last week's episode, Zarian said he believed AEW was going to be on MAX as early as January.
I was waiting to see when one of the mainstream sports media reporters would publish a story about the TV rights because that would mean that we are zeroing in on the finish line. Though, it's possible that other details like MAX and the rumored FS1 relationship might not be finalized until later.
