AEW President and CEO Tony Khan recently addressed his bid for WWE in 2023.
Brandon Thurston reported that Khan, through his Base 10 company, made an approximately $6.9 billion bid for WWE during its sale process after Vince McMahon returned to the company in January 2023. Endeavor eventually won out in the process, but the other bidders were Formula One parent company Liberty Media and private equity firm KKR.
It wasn’t clear at the time why Khan was part of the process, but he was asked about on a recent appearance on Jonathan Coachman and Vince Russo’s podcast, “Coach and Bro.”
“I was very interested in the process, and I think that if there was going to be a sale, I would at least want to have a chance to be involved. And if it had gone for anything less than that, I would have really kicked myself,” Khan told Coachman and Russo.
Thurston calculated, based on the share prices at the time, that Khan’s offer was the lowest. Endeavor bid approximately $8.5 billion, KKR bid about $8.0 – $8.7 billion and Liberty Media bid about $8.5 – $8.9 billion. This information emerged as part of a WWE shareholder lawsuit, in which plaintiffs alleged an unfair process in the company’s sale. Plaintiffs also alleged that the competing offers, especially those from Liberty and KKR, were not allowed to fully develop, precluding a truly competitive process in which the bidding would’ve gone higher. Both sets of defendants deny that claim and many of the suit’s other allegations.
Khan addressed those allegations.
“While respecting the confidentiality of that, I would say I don’t have any complaints about that process from my side that I would want to talk about right now,” Khan said. “I also would say, at the time, that seemed like, to me, just reiterating, if it had gone for any less, I would have beat myself up. Why wouldn’t you put in a bid? I thought that was a reasonable number that I put in.”
