Nobody knows the future of AEW as today, but it does not stop people from speculating. But I have difficulty to believe that it will just die without their current distribution. At the very least they can temporarily operate under a PPV model until new distribution arises.
An undisclosed pro wrestling company believes AEW are "in trouble" if/when the Paramount-WBD merger is completed due to TKO's partnership with Paramount Skydance.
This belief stems from their own experience. The company were in talks over airing on Paramount+, only for those talks to go cold after the UFC-Paramount+ deal was announced.
"Ari Emanuel's a wild card and there is a story that I was told that I did not know that there was a wrestling company that was negotiating with Paramount+. It would have been a little over a year ago, and they did not have a written deal, they were confident in a deal. They were negotiating with people at Paramount, top people, one of them ended up losing his position in the Skydance merger, one of them was still there. The company was confident they would get on Paramount+ because at the time there was no wrestling on Paramount+. As it came down to the wire, they had nothing signed or anything like that, then the UFC deal came in. Once the UFC deal came in, all of a sudden everything got cold with them completely. They don’t know, but their thought was it was Ari Emanuel and their thought is AEW's in trouble."
On the other hand, others within pro wresting have been more positive about AEW's post-merger future, with it being talked about that AEW special events could air on CBS.
"They'll probably get something somewhere because the reality is their television stuff is strong enough that they'll get something somewhere... But I mean, again, David Ellison and Tony Khan know each other from the NFL. I know that they've talked. Tony has clearly been very optimistic about, number one, getting this show in more homes due to getting on Paramount+, getting more backing. He has not talked about the potential of CBS but other people in the business have talked about the potential of CBS for a special or something, a one-time deal like UFC gets. And the idea of buying the pay-per-views like they do with UFC which guarantees AEW the money and will put the pay-per-views in way more homes, so a lot more people will be watching it, which is probably better in the long run. There are people who believe that WWE benefited greatly by these pay-per-views not being a high-cost thing and more people watching it, and therefore it helps everything because far more people are watching the bigger shows than have ever watched them before, especially now that they’re on Netflix worldwide."
(Source: Wrestling Observer Radio)