BRAND NEW promotion All Elite Wrestling have announced an exciting partnership with ITV.
And UK fans will be able to keep updated with all the latest storylines as ITV 4 will be airing its weekly show.
As Sun Sport reported earlier this month, WWE are set to end their television rights deal with Sky Sports to switch to BT Sport.
But AEW will now be available to TEN TIMES as many viewers with ITV 4 being available in 27m homes compared to BT’s 2.19m subscribers.
The announcement came last night as the company’s founder and CEO Tony Khan was interviewed by Jack Whitehall.
The billionaire, who also agreed a deal for tomorrow’s Double or Nothing pay-per-view to be shown on ITV box office, said: “Yeah, they were the first partner we could have chosen. The people at ITV are phenomenal. When I first went to them with this idea, I didn’t actually have anything yet. All I had was an idea.
“I went to them and I had no wrestlers or you know, really didn’t even officially have a name of a wrestling company, I had an idea. They didn’t buy it, but they liked what I was saying.
“I hadn’t sold anything to them yet but we had a concept that they wanted to keep talking about. And when I did do all these things, they knew, ‘Hey, it’s a man of his word. He said he was gonna create a new wrestling company, he said he’d generate a lot of interest in the wrestling company, he said they were gonna put together a roster of the best performers in the world in a short time, and build this buzz. And that they would do this show in Las Vegas and it would sell out.’
“And I went and did all those things, and then you know, they were there and they held up their end of the handshake too.”
Khan, who has hired Cody and Brandi Rhodes along with Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks to run the company as executives, continued: “And it’s been a great partnership, and the people that work at ITV Sport are like, phenomenal, phenomenal people.
“What I think is really cool is some of them are like, really, really big wrestling fans. It’s always a pleasure. Just like I enjoy talking to you about it and enjoy getting you back into wrestling, I enjoy talking to them about it.
“It’s really fun, it’s not a chore for me. This is like when you say, ‘Am I mad to get into this business?’ Well, I told you when I was getting into it, I really do love it. Just like with all the businesses we get in, I’m very fortunate that I get to work in things I like, and want to do, and that I choose to do.
“I’m not doing this just because it’s a fun thing to do. We’ve invested millions upon millions of dollars into what we really believe is going to be a huge, huge business.”
Khan, also the owner of relegated Fulham, also discussed the possibility of fans of these shores getting to see his AEW superstars live in action.
He said: “I would love to bring AEW to the UK in the future. I mean, we’ve — what we’ve got right now in the US and the UK is phenomenal. Because like I said, it’s been so long since anybody’s had the distribution – nobody’s had the distribution we have.
“To have partnerships with both TNT and ITV at the same time, it’s the best distribution any wrestling company, bar none, has ever had. And that’s what we have on our side right now.
“And absolutely we are going to come to the UK and do some big shows. I’m really excited about what we’re going to do there.”
