AEW Lead Investor Shad Khan Says AEW Isn't Competing With WWE

Shad Khan joined Yahoo! Finance's All Markets Summit: Generational Opportunities to speak about All Elite Wrestling.

Shad Khan is the lead investor of AEW and the father of AEW President Tony Khan.

During the summit, Khan spoke about how AEW started, quoting that it was Tony's idea and how Tony was a lifelong wrestling fan.

"It all started with my son Tony. It was his idea, his passion, his drive as a lifelong wrestling fan ? so I've supported him financially, said Shad Khan. "He kept talking about it, that we ought to do it, and here are the reasons why we should do it. I kept stress testing the idea, and then I struck a check to fund it because if you're going to do it, it's gotta be right. That was the most important thing. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression, but his idea, his passion, and his drive, and it's off to a great start."

He spoke about how AEW isn't here to compete with WWE and that it's important that AEW does its own thing.

"WWE is a great company, but we are not here competing with them, revealed Khan. "In the golden age of wrestling during the late '90s, there were 10 million fans. Now It's down to 2 million. So we're tapping into fans who were not engaged and quite frankly the younger fan who never got quite into it. Competition is good for everybody, but it's very important for AEW to do our own thing."

The owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars also spoke about how different the wrestling business is from the football business. He revealed that the difference comes from the talent and where to find them.

"It's quite different, and that's the question I had for Tony," said Shad Khan. His point to me was that the big difference here is there's a huge amount of talent that's on the street. Whereas in football and the NFL, the top talent is already there."