Owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Fulham F.C, and All Elite Wrestling, Shad Khan spoke with Forbes recently about his investment in the wrestling industry.
When asked if All Elite Wrestling was his idea or his son Tony’s, Shad says it was Tony’s idea and has been pleasantly surprised by the promotion’s early success.
“This is one of those cases where, as a father, you don’t mind being wrong,” he said. “Obviously my son Tony, who had passion for it, this was his idea and God’s blessed us, we have the financial means, and we’ll try it. You get to a stage in life where you can fail and it’s not life-threatening and this was one of those. I am as surprised as anybody.”
Khan was then asked what drew him into thinking wrestling was something he could invest in.
“The golden age of wrestling would be in the late 90s when you had two competitive leagues, WCW and WWF, and we know wrestling is scripted but what was definitely unscripted, real, was the competition between the leagues. In those days you had 10 million hardcore wrestling fans, today there are probably 2 million or less. So there was an audience that was underserved.”
The Shad Khan interview can be viewed in the player below, with his comments about AEW taking place around the 11-minute mark. If the embed does not work, visit Forbes.com.
In addition to wrestling talk, he also speaks about his investment in the new Black News channel (which debuted earlier this month), his other investments and more.
