It’s being reported that WWE and its corporate parent, TKO, have an option to buy TNA Wrestling, though it’s likely that what they really want is to use the right of first refusal that comes with the option to control who ends up with the Nashville-based wrestling company.
Wrestling Observer Newsletter editor Dave Meltzer is reporting today that the idea is WWE and TKO want to recruit someone at the financial level of Tony Khan, the billionaire owner and president of WWE’s main rival, AEW, “that would work with WWE and try and get TV deals that would be in competition with AEW.”
“The idea is to use the partnership and get TNA to the No. 2 spot, thus hurt AEW’s popularity and ability to get the next television contract in 2027,” Meltzer wrote in this week’s WON.
We already knew that WWE and TNA had announced a partnership earlier this year that has mainly just had talent from each company appearing on the others’ weekly TV shows and pay-per-views.
Now we have to wonder if there was always more to that agreement than just the talent portion that we’ve seen, and if this option-to-buy thing has been there all along.
WWE and TKO partnered with the entertainment company Filip in the purchase earlier this year of the Mexico-based wrestling company AAA, which had been in an informal interpromotional relationship with Khan’s AEW before WWE and TKO showed business interest in AAA.
Against that backdrop, we have Fightful breaking the news Thursday that former UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta has indicated interest in buying TNA Wrestling.
One would imagine that Fertitta, a long-time friend of the current UFC showrunner, Dana White, would be a WWE- and TKO-friendly and -approved billionaire, who the suits wouldn’t mind taking a financial hit trying to get TNA to compete head-to-head with AEW.
That idea, that WWE and TKO are trying to prop up TNA to be able to compete with AEW, was something that we wrote about just yesterday, with the news being that TNA’s current owner, the Toronto-based Anthem Sports & Entertainment, are looking at a TV deal with The CW that would involve moving its weekly TV show, “Impact,” to Wednesdays to compete head-to-head with AEW’s flagship weekly show, “Dynamite.”
ICYMI
The report has TNA and Anthem, egged on by WWE and TKO, seeking a modest annual TV deal in the $10 million range – as I wrote yesterday, that ain’t even modest; that’s prudish – for 52 weeks of “Impact.”
The company would obviously lose buckets of money just on production at that contract rate, which hints to somebody with deep pockets having to be willing to kick in a subsidy to provide weekly competition for AEW.
Khan signed a five-year deal with Warner Bros. Discovery that paid $43 million a year when he launched AEW in 2019, and lost gobs of money even at $43 million a year.
Khan re-upped with WBD last year with a new five-year deal at $150 million a year, which might make money, just to share how much it costs to run one of these companies.
So, what’s going on here is, WWE and TKO are looking for a sugar daddy willing to eat massive losses on TNA so that they can make life miserable for Tony Khan.
TKO, in particular, doesn’t want another antitrust lawsuit, so they’ve got to find somebody like a Lorenzo Fertitta to provide a degree of separation, for legal purposes.
I don’t see how that works in terms of preventing Tony Khan from suing TKO and whoever would be willing to collaborate with them to the Stone Age, but then, I’m 0-1 career as a lawyer, what do I know?
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Chris Graham
