{"id":509343,"date":"2026-03-07T14:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T14:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/509343\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T14:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T14:15:10","slug":"tony-khan-thrilled-paramount-outbid-netflix-for-warner-bros-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/509343\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Khan \u2018thrilled\u2019 Paramount outbid Netflix for Warner Bros Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are still hurdles that David Ellison and his team at Paramount Skydance will need to overcome before they can finalize their purchase of Warner Bros Discovery<\/a>. After making the stakes too rich for Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, the Ellisons deal still needs to overcome challenges from blue state Attorney Generals<\/a> (Attorneys General?), and win approval from the European Union. That could conceivably take years. But Paramount has already begun revealing plans for the merged company as part of efforts to get the $110 billion deal backed by Ellison\u2019s father approved by all required entities.<\/p>\n

Other than learning that their current streaming home of HBO Max is going to be absorbed into a superhub<\/a> of Paramount-owned platforms, AEW hasn\u2019t come up in any of those plans yet. In addition to streaming on HBO Max, the Tony Khan-owned pro wrestling promotion\u2019s weekly shows air on WBD-owned TBS and TNT. Those media rights are covered under a contract that lasts through 2027 with a Warners option for 2028; WBD also owns an unknown-but-less-than-10% stake<\/a> in AEW.<\/p>\n

I am neither the owner of a pro wrestling \u201dchallenger brand\u201d nor an entertainment industry executive, but while I could see Khan preferring Warners go to one of the few big media companies not currently linked to WWE\u2026 UFC, which like WWE is owned by TKO, just inked a huge deal with Paramount. It\u2019s been pretty clear that TKO would like there to not be any \u201cchallenger brands\u201d<\/a> in WWE\u2019s or any of their spaces, so it wouldn\u2019t surprise too many if they encouraged Paramount to move on from AEW, and maybe even to hamper their performance by moving them to less favorable time slots, etc. if they\u2019re still under contract when Ellison gets to fully take charge.<\/p>\n

That viewpoint was raised by other Meltzer sources. He writes in the WON:<\/p>\n

Others are claiming it\u2019s the death knell because Paramount, either to cut back on costs, or due to pressure from TKO given they have contracts with UFC and Zuffa Boxing, will get rid of TKO\u2019s only real significant wrestling competition.<\/p>\n

TK should hopefully have a better read on the situation than anyone outside of it, and got their current deal with WBD done when many said he wouldn\u2019t be able to get anything close to it. We\u2019ll judge him on that when this horrible-for-consumers, good-for-the-ultrarich-and-fascist-leaning deal is done.<\/p>\n

You can certainly speculate though. Is Tony Khan right be \u201cthrilled\u201d, or are those predicting doom and gloom better forecasters?<\/p>\n

* Something many believe Meltzer himself to be. Just want to say it before that topic inevitably inevitably comes up in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are still hurdles that David Ellison and his team at Paramount Skydance will need to overcome before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5894,58784,231214,28,231215,4366],"class_list":["post-509343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aew","tag-aew-collision","tag-aew-dynamite","tag-business","tag-mma-mixed-martial-arts","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}