AEW will be officially in the hands of WarnerMedia and Discovery after a merger of the two companies.
Discovery investors voted in approval of the company’s $43 billion acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T to create Warner Bros. Discovery during a special meeting of stockholders on Friday, marking one of the final formal steps before the transaction can close
Discovery announced that today their shareholders had voted in favor of the merger of both companies. According to Deadline, Warner Bros. and Discovery will be described as:
A premiere world entertainment company.
The agreement between WarnerMedia and Discovery was in negotiations for a while, and the Discovery shareholders’ vote was one of the most important steps towards closing the deal. It should be completed during the 2nd quarter of 2022. Discovery CEO Davis Zaslav heads Warner Bros. Discovery.
The deal combines properties from WarnerMedia and Discovery, which includes AEW that airs on WarnerMedia channels TBS (AEW Dynamite) and TNT (AEW Rampage). Likely, there will not be any immediate impact on the AEW of the merger. Since the promotion’s TV deal for both Dynamite and Rampage runs through the end of 2024.
WarnerMedia, and Discovery both offer their streaming services, HBOMax and Discovery+, respectively. It’s not clear whether they will stay separate or be merged in the future. Before the announcement by Tony Khan that he’d bought Ring of Honor, many believed that AEW had signed a contract to stream the show on HBOMax.
Khan has since clarified the reason for his purchase. Ring of Honor partially combined both the AEW and the ROH video libraries into an eventual streaming service.
