AEW President Tony Khan has repeatedly said that 2024 will be an amazing year for his company. Perhaps that will end up being true, but current attendance numbers paint a rather bleak picture.
Per WrestleTix, last night’s Dynamite event at Enmarket Arena in Savannah, Georgia, sold less than 2500 tickets, and upcoming events (besides Sting’s retirement match at Revolution) don’t look so great either.
Here’s what sources close to the Young Bucks Wrestling Observer Radio’s Dave Meltzer had to say about AEW’s current attendance woes, bringing in a comparison to WCW 2000:
“To me, under 4000 for Dynamite is where it gets to be below so-so. 4000 to me is fine for AEW. Under 4000, not so great. Under 3000, pretty bad. Under 2000 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 2000 there as well. And then the last week…St Louis is a historically great wrestling city. It’s not like they come there often, and to do under 3000 on a Saturday night, it’s really not good at all.
And another problem that they have is that every time they go back to a market, in more cases than not, the attendance goes down…and it’s like, okay, when you’re at [4000] and you’re going down, not so great. When you’re at 2800 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 gonna be to get this stuff up.”
Dynamite’s TV ratings are doing well and that’s the more important factor in determining AEW’s financial future. However, live attendance numbers are a good indicator of how hot (or not) a wrestling product is, and the bottom line is that AEW’s product is cold right now, based on ticket sales.
What do you think is the best way for AEW to address this problem, Cagesiders?
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