Cracks Forming per Dave Meltzer: AEW’s future is uncertain with WarnerMedia
Anonymous No.5483588 View ViewReport Quoted By:
From the mouth of Dave Meltzer
>The merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery has created some uncertainty regarding AEW’s future.
>On the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer indicated that significant budget cuts related to the merger could make it a lot harder for AEW to negotiate an increase in their TV rights money when their current television deal expires:
“[Warner Bros. Discovery is] gonna be eliminating new scripted programming...they’re gonna cut some of the scripted shows. Some of the ones that are around they’ll renew, but they will not be making news ones, apparently. So when these shows die off, the ones that are around now, in theory there will be no more scripted programming on TBS and TNT.
As far as what it means for AEW...when you’re talking about a company looking at making hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts, and another company partner that’s looking for a substantial rate increase on what they are getting on a new contract, which would be in 2024, you can do the math...”
>Television rights money is a big concern for AEW, for obvious reasons, but could the doomsday scenario of cancellation even be on the table? Meltzer says anything is possible with new management overseeing things:
“It’s really too early to tell anything for sure. You just don’t know the new people involved. You don’t know what their feelings are about wrestling...I mean anything is possible, but I don’t think that they would cancel it. But the key is still a rights increase. And then you’re talking about a company that’s trying to cut way back, so those two things are contradictory.”
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