Tony Khan says getting AEW on television was one of the hardest parts of launching the company.
AEW officially started in 2019 and quickly landed Dynamite on TNT, giving the new promotion a major platform right out of the gate. The company has stayed on TNT and TBS ever since, but Khan says getting that first deal done was not easy.
Speaking with Wide World of Sports, Khan said he had already signed wrestlers in early 2019 but still did not have the TV deal finalized. He admitted he spent nearly a year working on that part of the business before things finally came together.
“The biggest hurdle was to make the TV deal – I reached a point in early-2019 where I had signed the wrestlers, but didn’t have a deal, I had been working on the TV portion of it for nearly a year, but I had got into April and still didn’t have a deal.”
Khan said that period was difficult because AEW was already becoming real behind the scenes, but the company still needed a television home to truly launch.
“Reaching a point where it became a reality was very challenging. It’s hard to launch … but things have grown so quickly.”
That first TV deal ended up changing everything for AEW. Without it, the company may have had talent and momentum, but not the weekly platform needed to compete on a national level.
AEW has grown a lot since then, but Khan made it clear the road to launch was not as smooth as it may have looked from the outside. He had the roster, he had the idea, but the TV deal was the hurdle that had to be cleared before AEW could really take off.
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