How Nick Khan Changed WWE and Pro Wrestling Forever

Sportskeeda Wrestling

Ever wondered about the man behind the scenes shaping the future of WWE?  In this video, we take a deep dive into the fascinating world of Nick Khan and his significant impact on the wrestling juggernaut!   As WWE's President and Chief Revenue Officer, Nick Khan has been a driving force in implementing ground-breaking strategies that go beyond the squared circle. Join us as we explore Khan's background, his journey to the top of the WWE corporate ladder as the CEO WWE, and the innovative decisions that have been transforming the company's landscape.  Share your thoughts in the comments below! What's your take on Nick Khan's influence on WWE? Are you excited about the changes he's ushering in, or do you have reservations? Let's engage in a conversation about the man shaping the future of professional wrestling!  You can also visit our site: https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe  #nickkhan #cmpunk #therock #wwe #sportskeedawrestling

Transcript

00:00 Christmas Day 2000. It was an episode of the iconic game show Wheel of Fortune and a young

00:05 guy who was trying to make his way through law school and pay for the bar exam and all those

00:10 expensive classes was on a game show trying to pay for it. He would end up winning $16,650

00:17 which would help him secure some of that funding. But what on earth does this have to do with pro

00:22 wrestling and the WWE? Because that young guy was also one of the most important figures in the

00:28 business of WWE today. The multi-billion dollar man of pro wrestling. This is the story of the

00:35 rise of Nick Khan. This is Sportskeeda Wrestling. I'm Kevin. Let's go into this unique and influential

00:41 story and let us know what you think of Nick Khan as a businessman and an influence in the

00:46 world of wrestling in the comments below. Nick Khan's name has been brought up in the last few

00:50 years associated with big things that are positive and some things that are assumed to be negative.

00:55 There isn't much to be known about Nick Khan's past before wrestling beyond what he's done

01:00 professionally since he's a pretty private person in a very public world. But he certainly had a

01:05 rapid rise in the industry and it started out as him pursuing a career in law. Yeah, the whole

01:12 Wheel of Fortune thing is actually true. Nick Khan revealed in the Pat McAfee show that he was a

01:17 wrestling fan though from a young age and was even an usher for the memorable event that was

01:23 Wrestlemania 9 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. But don't blame him for the ending of the show.

01:28 He was just an usher showing people where their seat was. He didn't book that whole ending with

01:32 Hulk Hogan. Khan's childhood connection to pro wrestling is even deeper than that. Part of his

01:37 youth was spent in Hawaii where he met this other kid that was also crazy about pro wrestling,

01:42 Dwayne Johnson. Yeah, the same kid who grew up to become The Rock. Nick's sister, Nanachka,

01:48 had also had a connection with The Rock as she would later go on to produce and be the showrunner

01:53 of Young Rock, The Rock's biographical sitcom. In a 2021 post on Instagram, Rock revealed more,

02:00 saying, "In the mid-1980s, Nick Khan and his sister, Nanachka Khan and myself,

02:06 used to run around as kids in Honolulu, Hawaii, every month when my grandmother would promote at

02:11 the local arena her monthly pro wrestling shows. As kids, we loved the pro wrestling business,

02:17 and as adults, our love and respect for the wrestling business has become boundless."

02:23 Wow, how they would really reconnect later on, huh? Nick Khan would pursue a career in law that

02:28 would eventually find himself working in the entertainment industry representing talent as an

02:33 agent. He was working through the ICM Group and he was managing high-profile clients quickly,

02:39 like TV personality Nancy Grace, sports TV personalities like Hannah Storm, Max Kellerman,

02:45 and Jim Lampley. Nick Khan's clients appreciated him so much that they followed him over to the

02:50 Creative Artists Agency in 2012. At CAA, he was made one of the co-heads of their TV department,

02:57 where he wasn't just managing individual clients, but he was also representing various organizations

03:03 trying to secure big money deals with broadcast outlets. One of those big organizations just so

03:08 happened to be WWE. This kickstarted his association with WWE as a third-party representative,

03:15 but it was only in 2013 that he would get into more proper direct contact with them through one

03:20 of the higher-ups in the company, a wrestling talent and mover and shaker in the business,

03:25 Triple H. Triple H had called Khan to talk about a possible WrestleMania match for one of his

03:32 clients, NFL superstar Tim Tebow, who had just got cut from the New England Patriots. Triple H

03:38 inquired about a possible NFL vs WWE match that would see Tebow take on the Big Show,

03:45 someone who had some experience taking on outsider celebrities on WWE's biggest show of the year.

03:50 This led to a meeting that also involved WWE's head honcho Vince McMahon. Although the deal fell

03:56 through, Nick Khan was always in touch with Triple H after this, a factor that would play a big role

04:02 in him eventually joining the company. Nick Khan saw where things were going in the media world in

04:07 2017, and how WWE could benefit from it. WWE's broadcast deals were calculated based on Ad

04:15 Adjusted Value, or AAV. Nick found, for the first time, that it was considered to be around $130

04:23 million for Raw and Smackdown, and this is where he stepped up. While negotiating on behalf of WWE,

04:29 he managed to turn that value by 3.6 times it. Doing the math, he essentially turned the value

04:36 of those deals from $130 million to $468 million annually. In 2018, he was one of the driving

04:44 forces that would truly change WWE's business for the foreseeable future. It is widely considered

04:51 one of the biggest deals in pro wrestling business history. He's the one who put it together. A 5

04:58 year, $1 billion deal to broadcast Smackdown, not on cable TV where it had been for decades,

05:05 but on network television, in a secured slot on Friday nights. It is, easily, the biggest WWE TV

05:13 deal in history that truly set the precedent for what would follow. Nick Khan was WWE's billion

05:19 dollar man. Though it was with little surprise after executive shakeups in WWE saw Michelle

05:24 Wilson and George Barrios, who played a critical role in WWE making the leap into streaming with

05:30 the WWE Network, that Nick Khan was personally approached to take over the role of President

05:35 and Chief Revenue Officer. His resume spoke for itself, and it happened to be during the pandemic

05:41 when WWE was going to see circumstantial challenges, cutting talent, cutting different

05:46 employees, and making changes to weather all of those circumstances. Unfortunately, Nick Khan

05:52 publicly got a lot of the blame, reportedly, and people just felt like he's the reason why my

05:58 favorite superstar got cut, when really those final decisions are made by other people in the

06:02 company. He was the one blamed for those mass releases, despite no evidence to directly tie

06:07 him to it. During an interview with his old client Ariel Helwani on BT Sport, he made it clear that

06:12 he's okay with taking the blame for anything bad that happens, and he's also okay with getting zero

06:18 credit for good things he's done. Like billion dollar TV deals? Come on Nick, quit being bashful.

06:23 WWE was in another interesting position as they tried to pivot with all these different changes

06:28 in the media landscape and the world around it, with television and streaming going under huge

06:34 differences during the pandemic. But Nick Khan was the right man at the right time, and one of

06:40 the first major examples of him officially within the WWE fold being the real man to make a deal

06:46 happen was another five-year, one billion dollar deal that took WWE Network to peacock with NBC

06:54 Universal, putting the entire library and live premium live events on a new streaming service

06:59 that needed something special with the built-in audience, like WWE. Oh, and he's also the one

07:05 responsible for shifts to when WWE would broadcast these premium live events, no longer on Sundays,

07:12 but Saturdays to avoid competition with other big sporting events, a big factor for a surge in

07:18 ticket sales, and renewed viewership by fans finding a product on a night when there wasn't

07:23 competition. At this point, big poppet Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter

07:28 stated on Twitter that Nick Khan had to be the biggest money-making signing to WWE,

07:33 and may have been more important than names like Stone Cold Steve Austin. What? Some of the biggest

07:39 money-making signings include Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, John Cena, maybe

07:44 Triple H, The Undertaker, but the fact that an executive whose name is hardly known to the common

07:49 wrestling fan before 2020 is on that list is a huge testament to the impact he's had. In a short

07:55 span of time, he has also managed to surpass several other people within the business to become

08:00 one of Vince McMahon's successors on WWE's internal leadership team, first alongside Stephanie

08:06 McMahon and then by himself. He was also one of the key figures in yet another big deal,

08:12 maybe even bigger than those TV contracts, the formation of the TKO company, as the Endeavor

08:18 Agency would come in and buy a majority share within WWE. He continued to juice up WWE's

08:24 distribution of content with an A&E deal, adding 130 more hours of televised programming. This

08:31 sudden change and the modernization of WWE in the last couple of years can largely be credited to

08:37 Nick Khan and his vision for growing the WWE business despite having a monster market share

08:42 in the professional wrestling, but the billion dollar deals weren't done for Nick and the WWE,

08:48 as they would score yet another game-changing deal, doubling even further down on the move

08:54 to streaming, bringing their long-time franchise of Raw over to Netflix in a 10-year, 5 billion

09:02 dollar deal that could be even inflated in value in the future. This will have Raw broadcasting

09:08 on Netflix weekly live in North America in January 2025 and expanding internationally with even more

09:15 WWE content on Netflix in the future. To put it into perspective, that's 500 freaking million

09:21 dollars a year. Even when WWE secured the most lucrative deal in history with Fox, it was just

09:27 200 million dollars a year, and that was a few years ago, and we thought that was a game-changer.

09:32 This isn't to say that the Netflix deal is all Nick Khan, but given his specialty in this field,

09:37 it's safe to assume he played a critical role in it. After Nick Khan was named co-CEO and then CEO,

09:44 he made a rather fan-friendly decision and hasn't shown any inclination to be impacting the creative

09:50 side of things. Let Nick Khan do his thing, and Devourhead Ari Emanuel, who's the most powerful

09:55 figure in this new TKO setup, has stepped up and let professionals do their thing, like Nick and

10:00 Triple H. He and Nick Khan are well aware that their expertise lies in business, and that Nick

10:06 Khan has been an engine for WWE to make big things happen and elevate the show to a new level. It's

10:13 safe to say that Nick Khan is the billion dollar, money mountain moving machine for them. What's the

10:20 next big move for Nick Khan? What's the next big business deal you see WWE making? Let us know in

10:26 the comments below!

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