Tony Khan Reflects On Five Years Of AEW During 'Great Year'

In two weeks, "AEW Dynamite" will commemorate its 300th episode from the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California. AEW has celebrated several milestones this year, such as becoming the longest running prime time weekly professional wrestling program on TNT, surpassing WCW, as well as officially simulcasting their programming on Max. With "Dynamite" nearing six years on the air, AEW President Tony Khan spoke with "Yahoo Finance" to reflect on the company's success since 2019, claiming that 2025 has been their best year.

"We have a huge audience. We've got a great partnership with Warner Brothers Discovery ... this is the first year of the simulcast, so now the show every Wednesday night it's simulcast TBS and Max, every Saturday night, TNT and Max, so the company keeps growing, expanding, we have a huge audience. AEW's on in over 150 countries worldwide, millions of people watch the show every week all over the planet." Khan said. "In 2018, I was looking at the pro wrestling landscape and I realized there was a real opportunity to launch a challenger brand in this business ... we're having a really great year, it feels like 2025 is in a lot of ways the best year we've had."

After sharing his love for AEW's simulcast deal with Max, Khan was questioned about the company's cable ratings, which he believes has only improved in 2025.

In addition to AEW's simulcasting success throughout this year, Khan touched on the company's growth on cable, stating that moving to streaming has not had a negative impact on their TV viewership.

"We grew the business so much with the simulcast, we brought in new audience with Max and streaming but also we've been able to grow our cable audience year-over-year ... a lot of people thought when you start simulcasting AEW on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights, oh okay well a lot of people they're still going to watch the show, but people are going to migrate to streaming. Well actually, our cable audience when we started simulcasting went up and we have a great audience on Max streaming every week too."

Khan then spoke about obtaining the consumer's confidence in his programming, explaining that AEW has needed to work hard to earn fans' trust and where they choose to spend their money, but believes they have delivered a compelling product since their inception. He also stated that he's proud AEW is still part of the conversation in wrestling after six years, which he wasn't sure was possible in 2019 due to the amount of media competition.

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