Mike Mansury details changes to AEW production and fan experience coming in 2025

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“The idea was getting more IP-based with everything that we are doing,” says Mike Mansury, EVP/head of global production, AEW. “How can we get AEW to be more towards the cutting edge? That’s always the challenge with our line of work. We’re not quite sport; we’re not quite entertainment. We’re a lovely hybrid. How do we take our form of content and intertwine technology into it that leaves us at the cutting edge and allows us to be trendsetters as opposed to followers?”

In total, AEW has about 16 touring production trucks, including the overhauled A and B units that are standard for broadcast and pay-per-view. The company had a secondary production suite constructed in its B unit, allowing AEW to entertain the in-arena audience independent of the television broadcast. Mansury calls the development “a pretty big initiative for us” as the enterprise considered revamping the production trucks with its partners. The new production suite will have shared resources with the A unit as well as independent resources to “super-serve the fans,” according to Mansury.


The front bench in AEW’s Live Media Group production truck
“Starting in 2025,” he says, “you’ll see more of a sports-style presentation in-arena in terms of being able to entertain the audience when there isn’t in-ring content or taped content happening as part of the television broadcast. We want to create a nice split between the live event and TV show, just to make that experience for those in the house feel a bit more special.”

With the multiyear media-rights renewal, AEW will simulcast both its Wednesday-evening show Dynamite (TBS) and Saturday night’s Collision (TNT) on streaming service Max. Mansury says there are still content details to be figured out with Warner Bros. Currently, AEW produces a domestic and international feed, the former including picture-in-picture breaks. The latter feed provides additional content as AEW “super-serves fans.” In the future, Warner Bros. may take additional content as part of the simulcast or replicate what AEW is producing for TNT and TBS, he adds.

“Technologically,” Mansury notes, “we’re in a much better place to make those decisions.”


Inside AEW’s Live Media Group production truck
In terms of key performance indicators (KPIs) for the new production trucks, Mansury says, there’s still some debugging required three-plus months after rollout. For example, when the new trucks were deployed for Dynamite, the graphics system in the A unit crashed. The IP-based configuration enabled the graphics operator to be migrate his setup to the tape room.

“Whatever sort of magic he was able to pull with our engineers,” says Mansury, “he was able to operate as if he was still sitting behind me. You wouldn’t have known that our graphics system crashed. If our graphics system goes down in our older truck, we’re going without graphics for the remainder of the broadcast.”

In that scenario, Mansury adds, a true KPI is whether the fans know and recognize the difference. “If the audience can tell the difference between a good broadcast or a bad broadcast when it comes to technicality, then something’s wrong for us. The goal is for it to seem seamless.”

Meanwhile, Mansury highlights the importance of AEW’s pay-per-view event at the Texas Rangers’ Globe Life Field next summer. Scheduled for July, the production could include 20-25 cameras of all shapes, sizes, and functionalities.

He and his team will determine what they can implement “to make the stadium show as big as possible. This will be the biggest test in terms of an overall robust show for the new trucks to handle.