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All Elite Wrestling CEO Tony Khan has been like a sponge, soaking up the business lessons relayed by his American success story father, Shad Khan.
“First of all, my dad is a very hard person, but he really is a great guy, and he has a big heart. And it swings both ways because he can be a person who could swing a big ax, but he’s also a very fair person. And I think that’s a good lesson and mindset,” Khan said in a new episode of the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast (see video above or listen below).
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Shad Khan’s story is one of the most remarkable rags-to-riches arcs in American business history.
He is a Pakistani immigrant who arrived in the US at 16 years old with $500 in his pocket, took a job washing dishes at a University of Illinois fraternity house to pay his tuition, earned an engineering degree, and then did something that almost nobody who starts as a dishwasher ever does: He built a multibillion-dollar industrial empire from scratch.
The engine of his entire fortune is Flex-N-Gate, an automotive parts manufacturing company he purchased in 1980 after first developing his own one-piece truck bumper design that dramatically simplified production. Flex-N-Gate now operates 76 plants worldwide and employs more than 27,000 people, making it one of the largest privately held auto parts suppliers in the world.
Khan then used that industrial wealth to build a vast sports empire.
He purchased the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2012 for $770 million, a franchise now valued by Forbes at $4.6 billion, followed by Fulham F.C. in England’s Premier League for an estimated $150 million to $200 million. He then co-founded All Elite Wrestling (AEW) with his son Tony in 2019.
AEW quickly established itself as the first serious challenger to TKO Group’s (TKO) WWE in decades, building its brand around stars such as Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks, MJF, and Bryan Danielson while securing weekly television on TNT and TBS.
In October 2024, Khan signed AEW’s biggest media rights agreement to date, extending its partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).
The multiyear deal kept AEW’s “Dynamite” on TBS and “Collision” on TNT while bringing both shows to HBO Max for live streaming beginning in 2025. The agreement is widely reported to be worth about $185 million per year, more than doubling the value of AEW’s previous television contract.