AEW, which gained significant momentum after its debut in 2019 and reached its peak after All Out 2021, is currently facing challenges with live show attendance.
The company is now struggling to sell tickets for its events. Recent episodes of AEW Collision have witnessed shockingly low attendance, continuing a trend of poor ticket sales over the past year.
On Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer expressed concern, likening AEW’s live attendance issues to the levels seen in WCW back in the year 2000. Figures below 2,000 for Dynamite are considered “really bad”, and there are reports of declining numbers in cities upon AEW’s return visits.
Here’s what Meltzer said:
“[Attendance for AEW shows] is not good. One of the things is like, there were a lot of weak advances in the last quarter, but they had a lot of the shows where they got late buys, whether it was bringing in Okada or Mistico, or having an MJF or Kenny Omega match, or just good local promotion, or lowering ticket prices, things like that. And so, I kind of got lulled into this sense of, ‘okay the advances suck, but it’s not that bad’. And it really wasn’t that bad the last quarter, Well, now, it’s that bad. And it looks worse.
Wednesday’s show, they’re under 2,000. To me, under 4,000 for Dynamite is where it gets to be below so-so. 4,000 to me is fine for AEW. Under 4,000 not so great. Under 3,000, pretty bad. Under 2,000 is really bad. Especially when you’re coming to a city once a year. They’ve got Tulsa coming up, they’ve never been to Tulsa, they’re under 2,000 there as well. And then the last week, St Louis on Saturday, when I saw that number… St Louis is a historically great wrestling city, it’s not like they come there often, and to do under 3,000 on a Saturday night, it’s really not good at all.
Another problem that they have is that every time they go back to a market, in more cases than not, the attendance goes down. There’s always exceptions to every rule, but in more cases than not they go down. And it’s like, okay, when you’re at 4,000 and you’re going down, not so great. When you’re at 2,800 and you’re going down in a major city, where are you headed?
You’re getting now to WCW 2000. And people hate when I use that term, but they’re getting there. And that’s a scary place to be. There’s a lot of things that they could do, but they haven’t. I know that Kosha Irby’s in, and this is actually his job, his job is going to be to get this stuff up. And it’s way too early to put any blame on him, he just got there.
Even if you’re the greatest promoter in the world, people are gonna buy more or less based on the product and the excitement of the product. WCW had Zane Bressloff in 2000 and they couldn’t sell tickets because nobody wanted to buy tickets to the product, and with AEW, the number of people who wanna buy tickets to the product is… they’ll buy the pay-per-views, they’ll watch Wednesday night TV, but they’re not going in any great numbers to the shows.”
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