AEW originally signed a deal with WBD in 2019 that paid out $45 million a year for the TV rights to “Dynamite,” which increased to an estimated $70 million a year with the debut of “Rampage” in 2021, and the later addition of “Collision” in 2023.
I wrote a piece back in July diving into an estimate from Austin Karp, who writes for Sports Business Journal, who told “Busted Open Radio” that he expected AEW would get between $110 million and $115 million a year with its new deal.
ICYMI
I did some back-of-the-envelope math based on what WWE is getting from its new TV deals –Netflix agreed to a 10-year, $5 billion (with a b-) deal to acquire the rights to “Raw,” and NBCUniversal agreed to a five-year, $1.4 billion deal to get the rights to “Smackdown,” which works out to $500 million a year for “Raw,” $287 million a year for “Smackdown,” and then a throw-in, WWE is moving “NXT” to The CW for $25 million a year.
Using the viewer numbers for each of those shows, I tried to come up with my own somewhat-educated guess on what AEW could expect from its next TV deal.
What I came up with is:
- Netflix is paying $3.2 million per hour of “Raw” content to reach an audience that, right now, on USA Network, is getting in the range of 1.7 million viewers per broadcast hour.
- NBCUniversal is paying $2.7 million per hour of “Smackdown” to reach an audience that is getting around 2.4 million viewers per broadcast hour on Fox, but you can expect that number to decline when it comes back to basic cable from a broadcast network, probably more in the range of where “Raw” is now.
- The CW is getting a deal: $240,000 an hour to reach between 650,000-700,000 viewers for “NXT.”
AEW is currently getting in the range of 700,000-750,000 viewers for its two-hour “Dynamite,” 400,000 viewers for its two-hour “Collision,” and 300,000 viewers for its hour-long “Rampage.”
The viewer numbers are closer, obviously, to where “NXT” is, but again, WWE practically gave the TV rights to The CW.
Based on my basic math here, the TV rights for “NXT” are actually worth closer to $110 million a year, and that’s for two hours of TV per week.
AEW provides WBD a total of five hours of TV per week. With WBD just losing its long-standing NBA TV deal, there could be interest in giving AEW better day and time slots for “Rampage” (currently airing on Fridays at 10 p.m. ET) and “Collision” (currently airing on Saturdays at 8 p.m. ET).
Better time slots for the B and C shows would improve the numbers for those shows, and consistent start times (i.e. not having to pre-empt for the NBA) will help across the board.
But that’s an unknown. I’d make it part of my sales pitch if I were Tony Khan, but, yeah, it’s just conjecture right now.
In the here and now, the average hour of AEW programming is worth in the range of $825,000 per, which works out to $4.1 million per week, or $215 million per year.
The details of this new deal, as it is being reported on the interwebs, aren’t quite where I had foreseen them, but they’re more in the direction of what I’d figured than the others.
Left unaccounted for: we don’t know what will happen with pay-per-views, and there’s speculation about Khan trying to land another weekly show on a broadcast network.
The bottom line: AEW looks to be on the verge of profitability for the first time in its brief five-year history.
This is good news for pro wrestling fans, incidentally.
Video: Analyzing the rumored AEW TV deal
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Chris Graham
