AEW owner Tony Khan says he was “flying blind” during WWE bidding process

Tony Khan said he was “flying blind” when making a bid to purchase WWE.

“I looked at it and felt that it was certainly, for me, in my capacity as the CEO and owner of AEW, a very interesting opportunity in the market,” said Khan during his media call ahead of AEW’s Dynasty PPV on Sunday. “When we launched seven years ago as a challenger promotion, I never imagined I would have even an opportunity to consider such a position.

“And given some of the restrictions, I think compared to other people, I was flying blind. Some of this, I guess, is publicly available information. I will respect the process, and there’s only so much I can say, but based on the information I had to put a bid together, I basically had the same market information everyone else had, which is why the bid I made was very close to the stock market price.”

Khan stated he was not given access to a data room. A data room is where sellers give potential serious buyers non-public financial and internal information. Khan said he understood why he was not granted access to the data room.

“I had no more information than the rest of the public,” said Khan. “No data room access or anything and I’m sure that’s why they all made it further in the process than I did.  As to what happened after my involvement in it, I can’t say with the other three parties, but I understood why they wouldn’t want to give me data room access.”

Khan placed a bid of $6.9 billion on WWE in 2023 when the company was up for sale that while competitive, ultimately fell short of winning. The information comes from recently unredacted court filings from November 2023 that are part of the ongoing WWE shareholder lawsuit that questions the process by which Endeavor eventually acquired WWE.

Tony Khan is the current booker and president of AEW. He has been the president and booker since AEW launched in October of 2019. AEW has since expanded to having two TV shows airing weekly with Dynamite on Wednesday nights on TBS and Collision on Saturday nights on TNT.