Tony Khan Compares AEW To The AFL, Calls Promotion 'An Unprecedented Success Story'

Starting from ground zero in 2019, All Elite Wrestling has since risen to arguably be the second biggest professional wrestling promotion of the modern era, behind WWE. During the AEW All Out post-show media scrum, AEW President Tony Khan reflected on the company's rapid growth, describing it as an "unprecedented success story" similar to that of the former American Football League (AFL).

"As a historian of sports, as I'm getting ready for NFL kickoff and getting ready to head down to Miami for the Jaguars kicking-off hours from now, I have to say that the last time that a challenger sports league in this continent had the percentage of the market that AEW has in their industry would be the AFL," Khan said. "The AFL was a great sports league. They had great stars. The NFL is the biggest media enterprise in the world and the AFL came in and they got real market share." 

"Of course, we all know they merged; it created the Super Bowl, the greatest game, the greatest entertainment property," Khan added. "Together, the NFC and the AFC form the NFL, the greatest sport, the greatest media enterprise and the greatest marketing machine in the world."

As Khan mentioned, the AFL emerged as a legitimate competitor to the National Football League (NFL) throughout the 1960s, so much so that the NFL proposed the idea of a merger that later went into full effect in 1970. Though Khan made no indication of a merger happening between AEW and WWE, he remains proud of AEW's own surging market share — one that he believes could potentially solidify his wrestling company as the second most profitable in industry history. Most recently, AEW sold over 50,000 tickets for its 2024 All In pay-per-view event, surpassing that milestone for the second year in a row.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit AEW with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.