>>19401262Insider here. Here’s what really happened:
Tony wanted to secure an exclusive deal with WBD. He sent out feelers to Fox and CW knowing WWE would try to compete for those deals. Tony backed out, and WWE secured deals with:
>ABC/Disney>CW Nextstar Media>Netflix >NBC/Peacock/UniversalThis was highly strategic for both WBD and AEW. In the WBD deal, WBD has ownership stake in enough of AEW to make it a propriety owner. This alone makes it difficult for anyone but Netflix to purchase them. The only other viable suitor was Paramount/Skydance. This helped both WBD get the deal they wanted to offload the mess they had, and it gave AEW legal leverage with Netflix. Swerve didn’t say that because he knew something and skipped up, he said it because he was told to. Shockwave was already copyrighted by NWA, so they had plausible deniability to pull out of the talks with Fox due to licensing. TKO has spread themselves too thin and has actually created a media monopoly. They actually are in a great bargaining position with Netflix. Netflix can’t just drop them, and they can’t just sell without adhering to AEWs stipulations, because they are now possibly considering TKO to have conspired with various media outlets to create a media monopoly. This means there is a chance Netflix may actually sell WWE off to cut though a lot of red tape for the acquisition of WBD (and they want WBD). AEW was quite literally a piece on a chessboard. You will see this come up next year in the news.
