Tony Khan Reveals How Much President Of TNT And TBS Was Looking To Bid For WWE SmackDown

AEW officially launched Dynamite on TNT in October of 2019, and since then the company has moved Dynamite to TBS and added two more shows to their weekly programming schedule.

Tony Khan recently spoke to Locked on NFL about the process of launching the company, and he recalled an interesting conversation he had with the President of TBS and TNT that ultimately brought wrestling back to the two networks.

“It’s something I started working on in 2018. The idea to launch AEW, a lot of things came together, and I believed there were enough great wrestlers that would be available in the beginning of 2019 to launch a wrestling league. In April 2018, I started working on this. I was at a party in Beverly Hills on a Friday night.

I saw my friend, who at the time was the President of TBS and TNT [Kevin Reilly]. I walked up to him, I was visiting with him a little bit, and I said, ‘Kevin, are you looking at bidding on wrestling TV rights?’ He was, and he was looking to bid on SmackDown. He told me what he was willing to pay, he said, $150 to $175 million a year. I follow the industry closely, so I knew that it was going to go over $200 million, and it did.

I pointed out, ‘I don’t know if that’s going to get it done. For a lot less than that, we could launch a new wrestling league on TNT and eventually TBS, too.’ That’s what happened.”

H/T Fightful