AEW Owner Tony Khan Bid On WWE During 2023 Sale

AEW President Tony Khan – Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Tony Khan was among those bidding for WWE during its sale process in 2023, according to court filings in the ongoing shareholder lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court.

As first reported by POST Wrestling, a Khan-backed company, Base 10, placed a bid alongside Formula One parent company Liberty Media and private equity firm KKR. Endeavor ultimately won the bidding process, thus spurring the formation of TKO, and this lawsuit stemmed from a belief that Vince McMahon had preempted the sale to secure his place with the company post-merger.

The complaint was recently unredacted, including responses from the defendants to each paragraph of the complaint. And it’s those responses that reveal the identities of the bidders, pertinent to the case as a disclosure of the key suitors aside from Endeavor.

“Base 10 is the owner of All Elite Wrestling, a professional wrestling promotion that plainly would enjoy significant synergies with WWE,” the filing reads.

POST noted in its report that Base 10 is not legally filed as the owners of AEW, with legal filings unrelated to this lawsuit indicating AEW’s parent as Beatnik Investments; Base 10 and AEW are owned by the Khan family, outside of the minority stake held by Warner Bros. Discovery in the latter.

Base 10 was incorporated in Florida in 2014, listing Khan as its sole officer and the Jacksonville Jaguars’ stadium as the company address.

Of the four offers known to have been made, Base 10 reportedly represents the smallest by a margin. POST’s estimates saw Base 10 offering a stock deal worth $6.9 billion, while KKR offered somewhere between $8 to $8.7 billion, Liberty Media between $8.5 to $8.9 billion, and Endeavor won the bidding war with an offer of $8.5 billion.

Plaintiffs in the shareholder lawsuit allege that the competing offers were not allowed to fully develop, preventing a truly competitive process which could have seen higher bidding. The defendants deny that claim.

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Read the original article on Wrestling Inc.