All Elite Wrestling

All Elite Wrestling (AEW) is an American professional wrestling promotion based in Jacksonville, Florida. It is majority owned and operated by Tony Khan, who serves as president and chief executive officer.

Founded in 2019 by Khan with professional wrestlers Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes, and Matt and Nick Jackson serving as initial co-executive vice presidents, following the success of the independent wrestling event All In in 2018. AEW's roster primarily appears on its weekly broadcast television shows Dynamite and Collision, as well as on its streaming and pay-per-view (PPV) programming. AEW wrestlers have also appeared at events produced by or co-produced with other promotions, including Ring of Honor (ROH), which was acquired by Khan in 2022. AEW's programming is available in 220 territories in 50 languages.

As with other professional wrestling promotions, AEW does not promote a legitimate sporting contest but athletic, entertainment-based, predetermined contests, featuring storyline-driven, scripted, and partially choreographed matches. However, matches require considerable athletic skill and often include moves that can put performers at risk of serious injury or death if not performed correctly. With an estimated value of $2 billion, AEW is the second largest wrestling promotion in the world, behind WWE, and third most valuable combat sports-related promotion in the world, after the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and WWE.

History

Background and formation (2017–2019)

In May 2017, professional wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer commented that the American professional wrestling promotion Ring of Honor (ROH) could not sell 10,000 tickets for a wrestling event, a feat that no U.S.-based wrestling promotion besides the dominant WWE had accomplished since WWE's defunct major competitor, World Championship Wrestling (WCW), in 1999. The comment was responded to by professional wrestlers Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks (the tag team of Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson), who were then top stars signed to ROH and good friends both inside and outside of professional wrestling as part of the group Bullet Club (and later part of the sub-Bullet Club faction, The Elite).

They promoted and held an independent professional wrestling event called All In in September 2018, featuring wrestlers from ROH as well as other promotions. The event sold out in 30 minutes and had the largest audience in attendance for a professional wrestling show in the United States held and organized by promoters not affiliated with WWE or WCW since 1993. The event was attended by 11,263 people. The event was acclaimed, and it led to much online speculation that Cody and The Young Bucks would expand their ambitions and create their own professional wrestling promotion or do a second All In event. Reportedly, people in the television industry were also very impressed with the show.

On November 5, 2018, several trademarks were filed in Jacksonville, Florida, that indicated the launch of All Elite Wrestling. Names filed for trademark included: All Elite Wrestling, AEW All Out, All Out, AEW, Double or Nothing, Tuesday Night Dynamite, AEW Double or Nothing, and several logos. In December 2018, Cody, The Young Bucks, Hangman Page, and several other wrestlers left ROH. The official announcement of AEW's creation came at midnight Eastern Time on January 1, 2019, in an episode of Being the Elite, a YouTube web series created by and featuring The Elite, wherein Page looked at his phone to show the All Elite Wrestling logo on his smartphone. Also announced in the episode was Double or Nothing on Cody & The Bucks' smartphones, AEW's inaugural event and sequel to All In.

On January 2, 2019, Cody, The Young Bucks, & Page officially signed with the promotion as competitors as well as serving as AEW's co-Executive vice presidents, (with the exception of Page), while entrepreneur, football executive, and longtime wrestling fan Tony Khan was announced as the president of the company. Tony's father, Shahid, was reportedly backing the promotion as lead investor. The Khans are billionaires and part of the ownership group of the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team and Fulham F.C..

Cody's wife, Brandi Rhodes, was announced as the company's chief brand officer on January 3, 2019. On January 8, 2019, the company held its inaugural press conference on the forecourt of the TIAA Bank Field, where they announced talents that were going to perform as part of the promotion, including former ROH wrestlers the team of SoCal Uncensored (Christopher Daniels, Scorpio Sky, and Frankie Kazarian), independent wrestlers Britt Baker, Joey Janela, MJF, Penelope Ford, and former WWE wrestlers Pac and Chris Jericho.

On February 7, 2019, the group held a press conference where tickets were released for Double or Nothing. Other big announcements included Kenny Omega joining as a wrestler and the company's fourth co-Executive Vice President, as well as the signings of Sammy Guevara, The Lucha Brothers (Pentagón Jr. and Rey Fénix) and Best Friends (Trent Beretta and Chuck Taylor).

Early history and TNT debut (2019–2020)

On May 15, 2019, AEW and WarnerMedia announced a deal for a weekly primetime show airing live on TNT, the network that formerly had broadcast WCW's Monday Nitro during the Monday Night War (1995–2001). CBS Sports described AEW as "the first company with major financial backing to take a swing at beginning to compete with WWE on a major level in nearly two decades".

On May 25, 2019, AEW produced their first-ever pay-per-view (PPV), Double or Nothing. It took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada and saw the debut of Jon Moxley, formerly known as Dean Ambrose in WWE. Also during Double or Nothing, pro-wrestling veteran Bret Hart unveiled the AEW World Championship belt. During the summer, AEW produced two more events, Fyter Fest in June and Fight for the Fallen in July.

On August 31, 2019, AEW produced their second pay-per-view event, All Out as a spiritual successor to All In. At the event, the AEW Women's World Championship belt was unveiled and in the main event, Chris Jericho defeated "Hangman" Adam Page to become the inaugural AEW World Champion. On September 19, TNT's website listed AEW's show as AEW Dynamite with a one-hour preview show scheduled for October 1 at 8 p.m. On October 2, Dynamite debuted on TNT which averaged 1.409 million viewers, which made it the largest television debut on TNT in five years. Also on October 2, WWE's NXT would make its two-hour debut on USA Network (the previous two episodes featured the first hour on USA with the second hour on the WWE Network), and they averaged 891,000 viewers. Dynamite beat out NXT in viewership and more than doubled its competition in the key adults 18–49 demographic, scoring 878,000 viewers compared to NXT's 414,000. This would also mark the beginning of the "Wednesday Night Wars". Prior to and after the episodes, untelevised matches were filmed to air on AEW Dark on the following Tuesdays (except before PPV events, where the episodes aired Fridays) on AEW's YouTube channel. On November 9, AEW produced their third pay-per-view event, Full Gear. In the main event, Jon Moxley defeated Kenny Omega in an unsanctioned Lights Out match.

On January 15, 2020, WarnerMedia and AEW announced a $175 million contract extension for Dynamite on TNT through 2023 and that AEW would be launching an upcoming second television weekly show, later revealed as AEW Rampage and airing on Friday nights.

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021)

As other sports cancellations and postponements were being announced in March 2020, AEW began to be impacted by the American onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the suspension of the 2019–20 NBA season after two players tested positive for the virus, the March 18 episode of Dynamite was held without spectators from Daily's Place in Jacksonville, Florida. That year's Double or Nothing was supposed to take place on May 23, but on April 8, the MGM Grand Garden Arena announced that they had canceled all events up through May 31 due to the pandemic. At that point, Nevada had been in a state of emergency since March 12, banning all public gatherings indefinitely. In response, AEW announced that Double or Nothing would still proceed as planned but from Daily's Place, as well as TIAA Bank Field for the main event match.

On April 13, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had deemed AEW, like WWE, an essential business critical to the state's economy, and had added an exception under the state's stay-at-home order for employees of a "professional sports and media production" that is closed to the public and has a national audience. In an interview on the AEW Unrestricted podcast, Tony Khan stated the pandemic has deprived AEW millions of dollars in revenue from live events.

On August 3, 2020, Jazwares released the first line of AEW action figures and toys.