Ariel Helwani calls Nick Khan WWE’s best hire in years.
Helwani reacted to WWE’s new deal with ESPN by praising Nick Khan. Starting in 2026, ESPN’s streaming service will become the exclusive home for all WWE premium live events in the U.S. This adds to WWE’s growing list of major deals with Netflix, NBC and The CW Network.
Helwani believes Nick Khan has played a major role in securing these lucrative and exciting deals. Responding to the news of the WWE-ESPN partnership, Helwani said, “And what have I said time and again — and I know that I come from a place of friendship and bias — the greatest decision that WWE has made in the last five or so years was hiring Nick Khan.”
“Nick Khan had all the relationships in the sports media business, an incredible relationship with ESPN and Jimmy Pitaro, the president in particular. And now you see another example of that. He continued, “Their rights deal with Netflix? Gigantic. Their rights deals with NBCUniversal and CW? Gigantic. And now, this is just another sign. Do they get this without him? I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. He’s a massive part of it.”
Helwani called Nick Khan the most important person at TKO, “His influence, I’ve said it in my opinion, he’s the most important person at TKO. Now, Mark Shapiro, who I believe is the COO or maybe the President of TKO, very high. Ari Emanuel, Mark Shapiro, Dana, Nick you know, the power players. Very important as well.”
“He used to be in a major position at ESPN as well. He used to be in a major position back in the, like, ’05s, ’06, ’07s, ’04s that time period. Um, so I’m sure the relationship helps, but I know for a fact that Nick has an incredible relationship with the brass there, and this makes all sense in the world, and I don’t know if they get it done without him.”
Khan joined WWE as Chief Revenue Officer in August 2020. He played a key role in major negotiations deals for WWE including forming, TKO Group Holdings with UFC and WWE under same umbrella. This resulted in him becoming President of WWE and earning a seat on TKO’s board of directors.
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