Tony Khan knows he is fighting an uphill battle with AEW Collision airing on Saturday’s.
Since reports of a Saturday show suffered, fans have been questioning how the show will do with major competition from the NFL during the football season. This could prove to heavily impact AEW’s ratings for their new show.
On the Double Or Nothing media call on Thursday, May 25, Khan discussed Collision airing on Saturday’s.
“I believe that Saturday night is the single best event night for live shows and selling tickets. When this came up, I was very excited and, as you can see, we have booked from great venues, starting with the United Center and great venues after that. With the environment that Saturday night presents, in terms of being conducive with live events and people going out and buying tickets, we think it’s a great opportunity and it’s one of the reasons I was so excited when we were presented the offer for AEW Collision.”
“It’s something we’re talking about. I’m generally not in the business of trying to compete with the NFL. Once you get to December, the college football schedule opens up and there is more NFL on Saturday. That generally starts around mid-December. I actually worked to leverage that a little bit last year, I did an experiment running Ring of Honor pay-per-view on that first Saturday where there is very limited college football with only the Army-Navy game and no NFL. Once NFL starts in December, it’s obviously that much more competitive of a landscape on Saturday TV. That was definitely one of the considerations. It’s not like we’re competing 18 weeks out of the season with the NFL. Generally across 18 weeks, most of the games take place on Sundays or Mondays when we’re not running head-to-head. It’s definitely something to consider as we get into the latter part of the season, the NFL is truly the toughest competition in the world and that will be as tough of a head-to-head matchup as you get. We’ve had tough head-to-head battles before, going up against the World Series or big playoff games in basketball. This would be the toughest thing we’ve gone against with the NFL. I’m not necessarily looking forward to it, but it will be interesting. I can definitely say the AEW is very much on the radar of the top NFL executives. They’ve definitely taken notice of AEW and the ratings we’re getting and the media attention we’re getting. I suspect they’ll have another reason to have a look at what we’re doing and very complimentary of how AEW is growing.”
Tony Khan
AEW Collision is set to begin airing on Saturday June 17th with the first show coming to fans from Chicago.
H/T to Fightful
Follow Corey at @CoreyBrennanBS on Twitter
If you enjoy Bodyslam’s content, you can help donate to the site here. You can also visit our PWTees store and buy Bodyslam official merchandise here.
You can listen to all of Bodyslam’s podcasts by following us on Spotify and subscribing to our YouTube Channel, or any of your favorite podcast platforms.ⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘ
