Episode 140 - Money Talks

I wanted to start the show, since it's sort of a money focus in this episode, I wanted to discuss the recent rumors coming out of...

An agent, sports agent by the name of Nick LoPiccolo had released a tweet or he, uh...

It was something on social media where he said that Tony Khan knows that Warner Brothers is going to not renew the contract, and that he's gonna have to find a new home for AEW after that, and that he's, you know, just hiding that fact from the wrestlers in the company.

That could be true.

It may not be.

It's hard to tell.

There are some people that think there's a lot of truth to it.

There's other people that don't believe so.

There is a lot of uncertainty now that Paramount Plus, or Paramount Sundance, the company, has purchased WB, and what's going to happen to a lot of the shows, because they're going to be having to pay off a lot of debt because of the cash purchase they made of WB.

They could have told Tony Khan that they're gonna cancel his show.

They may decide against that because it's not expensive programming, and it seems to have been on the upswing lately.

So Tony Khan will have a pay-per-view every month or so, and he can count on 140,000 people are gonna sign up for that pay-per-view, pretty much like clockwork.

That is his base.

But his last two pay-per-views have done much m- better.

The first one was up 15%, and this last one, I didn't figure out the percentage, but they estimate 204,000 buys for Double or Nothing 2026, which is close to the best pay-per-view they ever did in 2021, which I have reviewed before.

I think it was All In 2021, and I reviewed that in a, a previous episode.

It did 215,000 buys on pay-per-view, so it is the most successful pay-per-view to date.

But I think that Double or Nothing 2026 is the third-most popular.

So they're on the upswing.

Ratings have stayed steady or improved a little.

So Tony has a lot of things going for him when it comes to staying with WB or securing another television deal.

I think because Tony comes off as a wrestling nerd when he does these press conferences, people forget that he is from a billionaire family, and his father owns both the Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFL and the Fulham Football Club in the Premier League in England, two of the largest, most popular sports leagues in the world.

NFL is everything in the United States.

Premier League is huge all around the world with football fans, or soccer fans, as we say in the US.

So Tony is not without his own influence.

I wanted to start the show, since it's sort of a money focus in this episode, I wanted to discuss the recent rumors coming out of...

An agent, sports agent by the name of Nick LoPiccolo had released a tweet or he, uh...

It was something on social media where he said that Tony Khan knows that Warner Brothers is going to not renew the contract, and that he's gonna have to find a new home for AEW after that, and that he's, you know, just hiding that fact from the wrestlers in the company.

That could be true.

It may not be.

It's hard to tell.

There are some people that think there's a lot of truth to it.

There's other people that don't believe so.

There is a lot of uncertainty now that Paramount Plus, or Paramount Sundance, the company, has purchased WB, and what's going to happen to a lot of the shows, because they're going to be having to pay off a lot of debt because of the cash purchase they made of WB.

They could have told Tony Khan that they're gonna cancel his show.

They may decide against that because it's not expensive programming, and it seems to have been on the upswing lately.

So Tony Khan will have a pay-per-view every month or so, and he can count on 140,000 people are gonna sign up for that pay-per-view, pretty much like clockwork.

That is his base.

But his last two pay-per-views have done much m- better.

The first one was up 15%, and this last one, I didn't figure out the percentage, but they estimate 204,000 buys for Double or Nothing 2026, which is close to the best pay-per-view they ever did in 2021, which I have reviewed before.

I think it was All In 2021, and I reviewed that in a, a previous episode.

It did 215,000 buys on pay-per-view, so it is the most successful pay-per-view to date.

But I think that Double or Nothing 2026 is the third-most popular.

So they're on the upswing.

Ratings have stayed steady or improved a little.

So Tony has a lot of things going for him when it comes to staying with WB or securing another television deal.

I think because Tony comes off as a wrestling nerd when he does these press conferences, people forget that he is from a billionaire family, and his father owns both the Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFL and the Fulham Football Club in the Premier League in England, two of the largest, most popular sports leagues in the world.

NFL is everything in the United States.

Premier League is huge all around the world with football fans, or soccer fans, as we say in the US.

So Tony is not without his own influence.