AEW To Air On ITV In UK, Available To 27 Million Viewers
Free-to-air channel's reach eclipses WWE's in the country.
Earlier this month, AEW announced a deal to air Double or Nothing in the UK on major terrestrial broadcaster ITV, with the the agreement seemingly paving the way for a future, regular television arrangement.
Inevitably - and excitingly - that has now indeed came to fruition, with AEW's CEO Tony Khan mentioning in an interview with Jack Whitehall, of all people, that the nascent wrestling promotion will begin airly weekly TV on ITV4 starting October.
To say this is huge news is something of an understatement. Earlier this month, it was reported that BT Sport had won the rights to start airing WWE's product at the discontinuation of Sky Sports' current tenure. BT Sport is available to around 2.19 million subscribers. Free-to-air channel ITV4, on the other hand, transmits to a mammoth 27 million homes in the UK.
This means over ten times as many people will be exposed to AEW than the industry's de facto top dog. That's not insignificant.
"They were the first partner we could have chosen," said Khan of ITV, the UK's biggest television station. "The people at ITV are phenomenal."
To say the landscape of wrestling has received a seismic shake-up in the UK would be putting it lightly.