Tony Khan Addresses AEW Collision vs. NFL Saturday Night Competition
In a recent media call for AEW’s Double Or Nothing 2023 pay-per-view event, AEW President Tony Khan discussed the upcoming winter schedule for Collision and the possible hurdles the promotion might face given the new show’s Saturday broadcast timeslot.
Khan also shared his perspective on the notion that AEW can’t successfully compete against the NFL’s viewer draw on Saturdays.
You can check out some highlights below:
On the choice of a Saturday night event and the preparation that is underway: “I believe that Saturday night is the single best event night for live shows and selling tickets. When this came up, I was very excited and, as you can see, we have booked from great venues, starting with the United Center and great venues after that. With the environment that Saturday night presents, in terms of being conducive with live events and people going out and buying tickets, we think it’s a great opportunity and it’s one of the reasons I was so excited when we were presented the offer for AEW Collision.”
On how AEW is situated to compete with NFL events occurring on the same day as AEW Collision: “It’s something we’re talking about. I’m generally not in the business of trying to compete with the NFL. Once you get to December, the college football schedule opens up and there is more NFL on Saturday. That generally starts around mid-December. I actually worked to leverage that a little bit last year, I did an experiment running Ring of Honor pay-per-view on that first Saturday where there is very limited college football with only the Army-Navy game and no NFL. Once NFL starts in December, it’s obviously that much more competitive of a landscape on Saturday TV. That was definitely one of the considerations. It’s not like we’re competing 18 weeks out of the season with the NFL. Generally across 18 weeks, most of the games take place on Sundays or Mondays when we’re not running head-to-head. It’s definitely something to consider as we get into the latter part of the season, the NFL is truly the toughest competition in the world and that will be as tough of a head-to-head matchup as you get. We’ve had tough head-to-head battles before, going up against the World Series or big playoff games in basketball. This would be the toughest thing we’ve gone against with the NFL. I’m not necessarily looking forward to it, but it will be interesting. I can definitely say the AEW is very much on the radar of the top NFL executives. They’ve definitely taken notice of AEW and the ratings we’re getting and the media attention we’re getting. I suspect they’ll have another reason to have a look at what we’re doing and very complimentary of how AEW is growing.”
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