The fate of Warner Bros. Discovery is far from clear, with billionaire scion and Paramount/Skydance owner David Ellison refusing to take no for an answer while David Zaslav and the WBD board try to move forward with Netflix’s purchase of its studios and streaming business.
In their efforts to close the deal they’ve agreed to, Netflix and WBD filed a 519-page proxy statement late Tuesday (Jan. 20). The Hollywood Reporter’s reading of that document seems to confirm that AEW wouldn’t be part of a Netflix deal,
but would remain with the television company that would emerge from another planned WBD transaction: the split of their existing company into two, one focused on studios and streaming, the other on “Global Linear Networks”.
From THR’s Tony Maglio:
Though neither the phrase “All Elite Wrestling” nor the acronym AEW appeared once in the proxy, page 53 foretold the future for the WWE competitor. Really, it was the absence of the words and letters that informed (some of) this reporting. Following the close of the Netflix/WB deal, All Elite Wrestling rights will ostensibly remain with Discovery (aka the “Global Linear Networks” company), though the league’s weekly series and premium live events (PLEs) are expected to continue streaming on HBO Max throughout the remainder of AEW’s current contract. (AEW Dynamite airs on TBS and AEW Collision is on TNT; both stream on HBO Max.)
The streaming piece gets a little trickier, and would depend on a number of factors, including if Discovery/Global Networks picks up the option year in its deal with deal that was signed in 2024.
More from Maglio’s report on the proxy statement:
The AEW TV deal is tied to the basic cable channels TNT and TBS and expires at the end of 2027 or 2028, depending on what becomes of the contract’s fourth-year option. At that time, AEW programming is likely to leave HBO Max and join the upcoming Turner Sports streaming app. Of course, two (or three!) years is an eternity in the current media landscape, and so much can change within that time frame. There’s even the possibility of a nonexclusive arrangement in which both HBO Max and Turner Sports stream AEW events — perhaps the former gets the PLEs and latter the episodic TV shows…
Assuming HBO Max still exists as a standalone service (and not fully integrated into the Netflix app) at the expiration of Turner’s AEW deal, it likely won’t put up much a fight to keep AEW. It stands to reason that Netflix, the home to WWE’s flagship episodic series Monday Night Raw (in the U.S.) and the promotion’s PLEs (outside the U.S.; the ESPN app has them here), has little need for AEW. And should Netflix integrate HBO Max into its own service, it may not even be able to carry AEW programming. Though unconfirmed, it is believed WWE’s parent company TKO incorporated a noncompete clause in its deal with Netflix, a relic of the old days. Because everything in professional wrestling is some sort of a relic of the old days.
So it seems like, as most observers and pundits predicted, there’s almost no chance of WWE and AEW sitting side-by-side on Netflix. Beyond that, there are still a ton of questions about AEW’s streaming business — and that’s without even getting into the possibilities if Ellison is ultimately successful in his hostile takeover efforts.
Where do you think you’ll find AEW’s products in the future? Will that be good or bad for the company’s future prospects, or the wrestling business as a whole?
Sound off in the comments, Cagesiders.
