AEW President Tony Khan discussed a potential media rights deal for the ROH brand during a media call to promote the 2023 ROH Final Battle PPV event.
“We’ve had really good talks with Warner Brothers Discovery, had a great visit with them today and we have a really exciting relationship that has grown a lot over the years and has expanded for AEW. Ring of Honor is still a third party in the relationship and is a company putting on really exciting wrestling and is peripheral to the conversation right now. It offers a lot of value to AEW and to a media company. There is a lot of interest in ROH and some of the most exciting wrestling and stories and some of the best events in ROH history are happening now. It’s really awesome that ROH has healthy options and very complimentary for myself, my family, and our business interests, the ROH media rights and the massive library and IP are there and accessible to us as we pursue new media rights for AEW in 2024 and we also have the additional value of the ROH library with the AEW library that has conitnued to grow. Almost 200 episdes of Dynamite, well over 100 episodes of Rampage, and an exciting half-year of Collision.”
“It is a value for us that we have this big library and additional media rights in addition to the five hours of weekly television and the great shows with Dynamite, Rampage, and Collision. Having that with our pay-per-view shows, our library, and complimenting that with ROH with new events, which have been some of the best events ROH has ever had in the time we’ve own the company, and the ability to go back and look at some of the greatest wrestlers in the world, a lot of them are in AEW now, and some of them wrestle in other companies all over the world. It’s great to look back at that library of events. I definitely think it’s a value add for AEW and ROH to be aligned with media rights that are coming up for AEW in 2024. It’s going to be a very exciting time for AEW and it’s great to have ROH there as far as strategic value.”
“As far as the TV rights, we’ve had a lot of interested parties. It’s definitely something I’ve been holding onto and haven’t had a lot of detailed conversations. I think CW is a great network and we did have a visit. Dennis visited us as the Forum last year and was great. I have a lot of respect for Dennis Miller and the CW folks. The timing for us wasn’t necessarily right, but there is a lot of great, interested, people in the market place in both AEW and ROH. For 2024, it will be really exciting time for pro wrestling and ROH added good value going forward.”
(quotes courtesy of Fightful.com)
