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Who Is Shahid Khan? – Everything You Need To Know About the Billionaire Owner of AEW All Elite Wrestling
Following today’s All Elite Wrestling Double or Nothing rally which featured Chris Jericho among others, interest in AEW has hit a new high. The promotion is owned by Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American businessman. Below is everything you need to know about Vince McMahon’s latest competitor.
Shahid “Shad” Khan is currently 68 years old and worth $6.4 billion, ranking him as 65th on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, and 217th among the richest people in the world. By comparison, Vince McMahon, the majority owner of WWE, is worth $3.1 billion, good for #237 on the Forbes 400 list. In other words, Khan is richer than McMahon. Of course, it remains to be seen how much of his money Khan will put into AEW.
Khan made his fortune by starting Bumper Works, which made car bumpers for customized pickup trucks and body shop repairs, in 1978 by investing $16,000 of his own money and taking out a $50,000 loan. Once that company grew, he bought his former employer, automotive manufacturing company Flex-N-Gate, and integrated Bumper Works into that company. Khan supplied bumpers to General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler, and eventually became Toyota’s sole supplier of bumpers in the United States. This led to sales for Flex-N-Gate going from $17 million to $2 billion in 2010.
AEW is not Khan’s first flashy investment. He bought the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars in 2011 for $760 million. Khan is one of just three NFL owners who were born outside the United States. Under Khan’s ownership, the Jaguars have consistently gone after expensive free agents. The Jaguars are now worth over $2 billion.
Khan then bought the soccer club Fulham of the Premier League for an estimated £150–200 million in 2013. He has not revealed the official sale price.
Khan owns a 300-foot superyacht which took six years to build and cost over $200 million.
He tried to buy Wembley Stadium in 2018 but failed after he did not have the FA Council’s full backing. He plans to make a new offer, expected to be around £600million, in 2019.
While it is unknown how much money Khan will put behind AEW, he has said that he will be as committed to it as everything else in his life: “AEW will enjoy the same full commitment I have given to everything and everyone in my life — my family and friends, my business and, in recent years, to sports, hospitality and now entertainment,” Khan said.
Khan’s son, Tony, will be in charge of running AEW. Tony holds jobs and ownership stakes with the Jaguars and Fulham, and also owns TruMedia Networks, an engineering firm specializing in sports analytics. He also is an investor in Activist Artists Management, a talent management agency.