Variety, the long-running magazine covering the entertainment industry, named All-Elite Wrestling owner Tony Khan and several members of WWE parent company TKO, including Nick Khan to its \"Dealmakers 2024\" in an article published on the magazine\'s website on Wednesday.
Khan, AEW and the TKO board were one of the few non-agency or law firms named to the Dealmakers list this year, which included Audible and several lobbying and entertainment law firms.
Tony Khan was credited with AEW\'s new three-year deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, five years after the company aired its first show on WBD television.
In October, five years to the week after Khan launched professional wrestling promotion AEW as a direct competitor to Vince McMahon’s long-dominant WWE, he closed a multi-year media rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, worth a reported $185 million a year, that calls for AEW’s shows and events to be broadcast on TBS and TNT and stream on Max. The company is now valued at more than $2 billion, making it the third-most-valuable combat sports company in the world.
Ain’t bragging if it’s true: “Our new arrangement signifies that AEW will make history as the first professional wrestling promotion to simulcast events weekly on top cable channels and a top streaming platform,” says Khan.
The article called 2024 a year where \"deals weren\'t as plentiful or as rich, but necessity being the mother of invention, often more innovative.\"
Longtime World Wrestling Entertainment executive and president Nick Khan, along with fellow TKO executives Ariel Emanuel, Mark Shapiro and Andrew Schleimer, were also named. Variety cited the Endeavor\'s 2023 acquisition of WWE and WWE\'s deal with Netflix.
Last year, Endeavor merged Ultimate Fighting Championship with World Wrestling Entertainment under the TKO Group Holdings banner. In January 2024, TKO’s leadership quadrumvirate closed a $5.2 billion, 10-year deal to make Netflix the exclusive home of WWE’s flagship show “Raw” in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Latin America and other territories beginning in January 2025. As part of the pact, Netflix will be the home for all WWE shows and specials outside the U.S. from that date forward, giving roughly 80% of international territories immediate access to 100% its content, with the rest of the globe filling out their WWE lineups as outstanding deals expire.
“While the money is extraordinarily important, the downstream impact and ancillary benefits to being with the distributor and just south of 300 million homes globally was something that got us very excited,” says Schleimer.
Other members of the list included:
- Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, the second-largest lobbying firm in the U.S.
- Alter Kendrick and Baron, music lawyers who closed $1 billion in publishing and mater recording acquisitions in 2024.
- Audible\'s executive team
- Perry, Plashuk, Lefebvre and Hill of Covington and Burling, law firm specializing in entertainment acquisitions
- David Wright Tremaine, litigation law firm now advising on major entertainment projects
- Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein Lezcano Bobb and Dang, entertainment law firm
- Nina Shaw of Del Shaw Moonves Tnaka Finkelstein Lezcano Bobb and Dang
- DLA Piper, Hollywood legal firm
- Francisco Arias of Fifth Season
- Fox Rotschild, lawyers and talent reps
The magazine credited those on the list for maneuvering the economic ups and downs of the streaming bubble, COVID-19 and inflation, as well as strikes by the writers and actors unions.
