AEW Ticket Sales Expected To Collapse During Residency

AEW has announced a summer residency for many of its weekly Collision shows but Dave Meltzer has noted something like that just doesn’t work.

AEW has announced a deal with the City of Arlington, Texas and the Esports Stadium to hold 5 Collision shows and Ring of Honor’s Death Before Dishonor as part of a summer series on the path to All In. All In takes place in Wembley Stadium once again on August 25th and with 80,000 seats to sell in that stadium once again, Tony Khan’s company might have issues selling 2,500 seats in Arlington every week.

AEW Residency Doubted By Dave Meltzer

Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer has urged caution over Tony Khan’s decision to run the same building week after week and doubts ticket sales will remain strong for the shows, citing history from WWE:

They’re gonna try to sell tickets but there’s a limit. With the style of wrestling that you do today – and it’s not the booking’s bad or good or whatever – it’s just the nature of wrestling today and wrestling fandom and ticket prices today, you can’t go back to the same city week after week after week. It does not work. In Mexico City it works, we’re not in Mexico City but nowhere else.

If WWE ran the same arena – granted 1993 was a really low point for WWE but they started in the Manhattan Center with Raw. They were going once a month, they were not going every week. The first time they sold out and the second time they had maybe 800 people and by whatever number it was, they were out there with 300 people and papering like crazy and eventually had to move out because you can’t run the same place over and over again and draw people.

Jacksonville was during the pandemic but AEW in Jacksonville when they were running every week there because they had no other choice but they were opening up ticket sales they weren’t getting a lot of ticket sales there. They were running too often essentially.

The idea of going to Arlington, Texas every Saturday and one Thursday or Friday for a pay-per-view. You’re lucky if you’re gonna get 1,000 people there by the third week.

While Collision will take place in Arlington for the duration of the summer series, AEW Dynamite will continue on the road during that time.

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