AEW Facing Humiliation Over Australian Stadium Show

AEW is due to host Grand Slam in an Australian stadium in early 2025 but it seems that show won’t be going ahead as originally planned.

On the pre-show for All In in August, AEW announced that Grand Slam was heading to the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia on February 15th 2025. The stadium is home to the NRL’s Brisbane Broncos and the A-League’s Brisbane Roar, boasting a capacity of 52,500. The stadium attendance record is currently held by Ed Sheeran who filled the venue with 59,185 fans.

This is due to be AEW’s first foray Down Under but as news on the event has been thin on the ground amid suggestions that ticket sales have been very slow, it seems it might not be taking place as planned after all.

AEW Finding New Venue For Grand Slam

Fightful Select reported that change could be on the way sooner rather than later with a new venue likely to be announced for the event.

Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Bryan Alvarez also discussed the issue noting that many fans in Australia were shocked Tony Khan was being so ambitious given the company’s paltry TV audience in the country:

The AEW show in Australia is being moved because I guess they didn’t sell a lot of tickets. I got a ton of feedback when this was first announced from people in Australia who were shocked that they were even trying to run such a big arena.

Essentially AEW airs on ESPN in Australia but ESPN in Australia is not like what ESPN is in the US. They were pointing out that since the beginning on ESPN in February 2023, Dynamite only charted in the top 20 on Foxtel once, June 8th it came in 20th with 20,000 viewers. So the usual number of AEW viewers in Australia is under 20,000. So their basic point is if you’ve got 20,000 viewers every week, how are you gonna run a building that big?

Alvarez continued by noting that AEW faces real issues in trying to move the event to a more suitable venue so late in the day:

I was told that the issue now is that because they’ve waited this long, the decent size venues – the Brisbane Entertainment Centre has an 11,000-seat capacity but they’ve got a Bryan Adams and a Billie Eilish concert and the AEW show would have to be right in the middle of those two and they don’t think there’s enough time to get it in there.

So most likely it would be in the Pat Rafter Arena or the Nissan Arena both of which seat about 5,000 which looks to be the most likely scenario.

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