What does Tony Khan, an owner of an NFL franchise in the Jacksonville Jaguars, think about his new two-weekly Saturday night cable television show, AEW Collision, competing certain weeks?
The AEW and ROH President spoke about this exact subject during the AEW Double or Nothing 2023 press conference.
“It’s something we’re talking about,” Khan stated. “I’m generally not in the business of trying to compete with the NFL. Once you get to December, the college football schedule opens up and there is more NFL on Saturday. That generally starts around mid-December. I actually worked to leverage that a little bit last year, I did an experiment running Ring of Honor pay-per-view on that first Saturday where there is very limited college football with only the Army-Navy game and no NFL. Once NFL starts in December, it’s obviously that much more competitive of a landscape on Saturday TV. That was definitely one of the considerations.”
Khan continued, “It’s not like we’re competing 18 weeks out of the season with the NFL. Generally across 18 weeks, most of the games take place on Sundays or Mondays when we’re not running head-to-head. It’s definitely something to consider as we get into the latter part of the season, the NFL is truly the toughest competition in the world and that will be as tough of a head-to-head matchup as you get. We’ve had tough head-to-head battles before, going up against the World Series or big playoff games in basketball. This would be the toughest thing we’ve gone against with the NFL. I’m not necessarily looking forward to it, but it will be interesting. I can definitely say the AEW is very much on the radar of the top NFL executives. They’ve definitely taken notice of AEW and the ratings we’re getting and the media attention we’re getting. I suspect they’ll have another reason to have a look at what we’re doing and very complimentary of how AEW is growing.”
You can check out the complete media call below:
