AEW

AEW has survived four years and change as a wrestling promotion in the United States, but the one thing that’s been absent is a streaming platform.

It’s tough to ignore in the media landscape now, especially in wrestling. The preeminent company, WWE, changed the game in 2014 when they launched their own OTT streaming service. Then after years of having the subscriber model be their end-all, the company joined up with Peacock to broadcast all their live events and house their insane archive library. There’s also FITE TV and IMPACT+, and Ring of Honor, a promotion that promoter Tony Khan purchased himself, is run on the Honor Club.

All that to say, where is it? Well, the start-up company had to likely deal with being a start-up company at first. Streaming isn’t the easiest thing in the world to handle, but of late, there’s been rumblings that day could soon come. Khan expressed optimism that AEW would land on a streaming service. In Khan’s hopes, WBD’s Max would be the ideal place.

Per Jack Cassidy, Khan said to the wrestling publication PWInsider, “We have all the bones for a really strong streaming platform. It would be a very strong addition to any streaming platform, and my dream is that it all lands on Max.”

https://twitter.com/RealJackCassidy/status/1687081893047439362

Max is at an interesting point right now. Despite WBD’s expansive sports library, the streaming service doesn’t have a lot of sports properties on it. Peacock obviously has the NFL, the Premier League, and WWE. They have only recently begun to show the USMNT and USWNT on there and haven’t yet dabbled into its most valuable property: the NBA. They haven’t done a lot of live content in general, either.

But the tides may be turning underneath the surface. WBD CEO David Zaslav chimed in on the streaming service’s ambitions to broadcast live events. Zaslav indicated that they’ve looked into incremental tiers for the service in Europe. Tiers could allow for situations like this to make happen. Speaking of Europe, AEW does have AEW+ through FITE, and that term came to light recently when it was reported they trademarked it. Whether that’s an attempt to bring it across international waters is yet to be seen.

Whether it’s wishful thinking or not, AEW could certainly use a streaming platform. So, maybe Tony Khan’s dream of Max will come true.

[Jack Cassidy]

About Chris Novak

Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022