How to Think About Free Pay-Per-View Events, and What People Get Wrong
Every few months, pro wrestling Twitter revives the same argument for All Elite Wrestling, who is currently partnered with Warner Brothers Discovery for their media distribution: “Put AEW premium pay-per-view events on HBO Max for free. Kill the $50 price point it takes to order one of them. Grow the audience. Make it back in merch.”
It’s a compelling argument. It’s also incomplete.
To understand whether AEW should make PPVs free-to-view with an HBO Max subscription, you need to understand what kind of company AEW actually is, and what kind of company HBO Max needs AEW to be.
This isn’t really a wrestling or a sports debate. It’s a revenue-model debate.
The Appeal of “Drop the PPV Price”
If AEW PPVs are on HBO Max, fans assume the next logical step:
“Bundle them into the streaming subscription. Drive growth. Recoup downstream.”
It’s a great logic loop. Distribution matters. More viewers = more heat, more merch, more buzz. But before you declare PPVs the hot dog loss-leader of wrestling, take a breath.
There is precedent for this logic, and there are real constraints too.
The Delta and Costco Problem: The Thing You Sell Isn’t the Thing You Profit From
Sitting in an airport is a great reminder that a lot of big companies aren’t what they look like.
A big chunk of Delta’s profits don’t come from flights. They come from the Amex partnership — nearly $7 billion a year. In a lot of cases, Delta literally makes more money from you buying groceries with your card than from you buying a seat.
Same with Costco.
They don’t make much on cashews. They lose money on hot dogs. The profits come from membership fees, the recurring revenue base.
In both cases, the “core product” is just an expensive engine for a more scalable revenue source.
Wrestling promotions dream of this. Honor Club, TNA+, even WWE Network in its day are all attempts to build a predictable, subscription-based floor.
But here’s the flip:
The airline isn’t free. The groceries aren’t free. The PPV doesn’t magically become free either, not without something compensating for the revenue hole that would be made if you did make it free.
So… What Kind of Company Is AEW?
This is where the argument breaks.
AEW is not a pure media business with infinite upside leverage. It’s a hybrid:
Live touring company
PPV engine
Media-rights holder
Licensing revenue funnel
Merch machine
Marketing apparatus for games, toys, meet-and-greets
Reputation project for a passionate founder
If wrestling is not the only product — if it’s actually the engine for adjacent monetization — then yes, free PPVs could make sense. But that’s only if those adjacencies are real, large, and scalable.
Without that kind of solid business planning, you’re just torching a known revenue stream and betting blindfolded on a theoretical one.
The “Just Make It Free” Fallacy
Wrestling is an expensive sport to produce:
Talent
Travel
Production
Health & safety
Creative
Weekly content cycles
Premium event cadence
And yes, even agent fees at 10%
Digital distribution doesn’t make any of that cheaper.
This brings us back to the airlines.
Delta makes billions on credit cards — but they don’t give away all their flights to juice card signups.
If pay-per-views are your flights, you don’t comp them unless the alternative revenue model is proven, durable, and materially bigger.
“Growth” is not a revenue model. It’s a hope.
“What If Max Is Paying AEW?”
This is the crux.
If HBO Max is writing a check- a real rights fee, not a soft landing after the Triller situation — then sure, AEW can and should consider folding PPVs into the subscription.
But if Max is not paying?
Then AEW has to do the math itself:
How many new Max subs will AEW measurably drive?
What is their lifetime value?
How much of that LTV accrues to AEW?
Does that total equal (or exceed) current PPV revenue?
And if not… how exactly do you make up the shortfall via merch?
No serious operator makes a decision like this without a spreadsheet that answers all the questions.
And that spreadsheet is rarely kind.
Why TKO’s Model Works and AEW’s Might Not
TKO had perfect timing in each of their most recent media deals:
Peacock needed splashy content at launch
ESPN needed more sports inventory
Netflix needed a global moment post-password crackdown
In each case, the distributor needed wrestling more than wrestling needed the distributor.
AEW is negotiating in a fully different market, and possibly not negotiating at all.
Which leads to the real strategic question:
Is Max paying, or is AEW serving as a “favor” to a broader WBD ecosystem?
If it’s the latter, the free-PPV argument is dead on arrival.
The Real Risk: Growth as a Cover for Burn
Awareness is the easiest thing in the world to argue for.
But “awareness” without a monetization spine becomes a trap. Executives burn cash in the name of “growth” because they don’t have to show profitability… yet. It’s definitely a winning strategy in an industry like tech, where Uber subsidized rides to kill taxis - but later they ended up raising the prices again once zero interest rates were gone and they had to go profitable.
This is where media companies can get wrecked.
My Take
As a fan, I want AEW PPVs included in my streaming subscription.
As an operator, I’m skeptical — unless:
Max is paying meaningful rights fees or
AEW has a proven, scalable alternative revenue engine to replace PPV dollars
Absent that, free PPVs are wishful thinking.
Growth is great. But growth without guardrails is just burn with better marketing.
