Rumor: Another Major Network Vying For AEW Content, Turner Networks Not Happy With Situation?

Pay to play? Earlier this month, news came out that the upcoming AEW television show might be coming to one of the Turner Networks, meaning either TNT or TBS. That would be a huge moment for a new company, but at the same time it wasn’t set in stone yet. With nothing being ready yet, it turns out that another network might be in play and it’s not one that you would see coming.

According to Les Moore of Talking Sheet and Prowrestling.net, the Turner Networks might not be the only networks in play for AEW. Showtime may also be in play, though the audience would be far lower than the Turner Networks. Allegedly Turner wasn’t happy with the production of All In, which was handled more by Ring of Honor, which took away some of the shine from AEW. At the moment, nothing is signed and it isn’t clear which network is in the lead.

Very little of this has been reported and next to none of it comes from AEW-friendly camps.

— Les Moore (@prowrestling) April 18, 2019

The Showtime offer was for less money, and less exposure and a back and forth on whether it would be a weekly thing. The Turner deal was for great money. And then things changed when the Turner camp looked into the production of All In having ROH doing the heavy lifting

— Les Moore (@prowrestling) April 18, 2019

*again, treat none of this as confirmed, this is Dark Twitter rumor at the highest degree*

— Les Moore (@prowrestling) April 18, 2019

This is why a couple of things happened in coverage: why were they expected to lose money if a money TV deal was in place?

— Les Moore (@prowrestling) April 18, 2019

Thought among some are AEW was heavily advised by influencers in wrestling media to take the Showtime deal (calling this Showtime for simplicity, may not have been Showtime), because it played into AEW’s “game changer” revolutionary hype.

— Les Moore (@prowrestling) April 18, 2019

The confidence is 100% there that, if they haven’t by the time Oct. roles around, they will quickly thereafter flip their paid time agreement (whatever the details of those may be) to a lucrative offer.

— Les Moore (@prowrestling) April 19, 2019

Anyway, this has been my journey through Dark Twitter waters since January, and one of the things that “pulled me back in” was the number of notes I got asking me to look.

— Les Moore (@prowrestling) April 19, 2019

I’m by no means the only one who’d picked up on this. It’s been out there, I’m back channels. It’s just hard to get people on record.

— Les Moore (@prowrestling) April 19, 2019

And we’d both heard rumblings and talked to people independently who strongly pushed the idea that whether it was a paid or shared deal, it was NOT a WWE-like deal. That offer had been taken off the table. So we shall see.

— Les Moore (@prowrestling) April 19, 2019

Things are certainly looking up. Check out how we got here with a quick look at the Double Or Nothing press conference:

All Elite Wrestling

Opinion: I’m firmly at the point where I need to see something happen before I believe all these rumors. There are some possibilities floating around but until the deal is announced, it could go all kinds of different ways before we actually get to a deal. Hopefully AEW gets a major network that is easily available, as there are so many different ways that could go very badly.

Which network do you think will land AEW? When do you think the deal will be announced? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 28 wrestling books. His latest book is the the Complete 2000 Monday Nitro and Thunder Reviews Part 1.

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