All Elite Wrestling has now reached its one-year mark since making its debut as a weekly television series on TNT. It has not been an easy road for AEW. Despite the trials and tribulations faced by the upstart promotion, AEW is on its way to bigger and better things and to be an even stronger brand.
In an article recently released by Variety, WarnerMedia Executive Brett Weitz, who is also the General Manager of TNT, TBS, and truTV, and fellow WarnerMedia Executive Sam Linsky, who is also the Vice President and Co-Head of Scripted Originals for TNT, TBS, and truTV, spoke about AEW in general and the success of the company.
This is what Brett Weitz said:
“I think where the rubber really met the road was during when COVID hit and watching Tony really pivot and grow.” “And he was able to keep those storylines going and put so many great things together, even through a global pandemic, and that tells you everything you need to know about the DNA of that brand and that guy as a producer.”
Sam Linsky then talked about expanding the AEW brand and this is what he said:
“We have an opportunity to use all facets of WarnerMedia in a way that most places can’t.” “We’ve got a comic book company. We’ve got video game companies. We’ve got merchandising people. We’ve got people who make animation for television. We’ve got reality television producers. It’s all in house. So we have a real opportunity to spread this IP and grow it across WarnerMedia.”
All Elite Wrestling President and CEO Tony Khan would then give his thoughts as well and talk about the company working through the pandemic.
This is what Tony Khan said:
“After the first two weeks of the pandemic, as our roster started to thin out, what happened was we were forced to do shows with less than 30% of our wrestling roster available to us.” “And I’m actually proud of those shows as I am of anything because they kept us going.”
“I wanted to film shows to keep the storylines moving so that we could build a testing plan.” “I always believed that, as we’ve shown, a safe testing plan could be implemented. I didn’t know how long it was going to take to design and get all the tests we would need and get it all set up. But it came together in about a month.”
Some other notes from the article, expect the new one hour show to debut in 2021. Also the AEW toy brand is doing well.
“the toy line is performing well out of the gate. For the month of August, it ranked as the number three new property among U.S. toys.”
