Tony Khan Says AEW Viewership, PPV Business Up in 2026

Tony Khan says AEW is in one of the strongest stretches of its seven-year history, pointing to rising television numbers, robust pay-per-view business, and growing streaming reach as evidence the company keeps climbing.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance, the AEW President was asked whether the promotion has lived up to the vision he had when he founded it back in 2019. Khan said returning wrestling to TBS and TNT, the networks he grew up watching as a kid, was always the goal, and that AEW has managed to build something durable in the years since.

“Absolutely, yes,” Khan said. “My vision and dream was to be able to put on wrestling and have it be a lasting thing, and bring wrestling back to TBS and TNT, where I grew up watching wrestling. Thankfully, we’ve been able to do that. We started having Wednesday Night Dynamite in 2019. The show still runs on TBS every Wednesday, and then we have Collision every Saturday. This is my dream, to be able to keep the show strong, and the show is thriving.”

Khan also pointed to the accolades AEW picked up throughout 2025, including Sports Illustrated naming it the best wrestling promotion in the world, along with recognition from Yahoo, ESPN and the New York Post for its top event of the year. He argued 2026 has topped even that, citing double-digit viewership growth and a surge in pay-per-view performance through the first half of the year, which he credited to consistent match quality and strong rivalries.

Khan singled out the recent Beach Break edition of Dynamite, headlined by Kenny Omega defeating MJF for the AEW World Championship, as the promotion’s biggest TBS audience since the Blood and Guts special in July 2024. He also pushed back on comparisons to past ratings, noting AEW’s expansion onto HBO Max means traditional Nielsen numbers no longer capture the full picture of how many people are actually watching.

“In reality, this is the hottest and most viewers we’ve had in a long time, if ever,” Khan said. “It feels like the excitement around AEW today is at an all-time high.”

With All In at Wembley Stadium still ahead, Khan believes the company is carrying real momentum into the back half of 2026.