AEW Grand Slam Australia likely moving venues

[Chris]

@FightfulSelect
(free tier) reports that a venue change for AEW Grand Slam: Australia is likely, with an announcement expected sooner rather than later.

Over the past week, the current seating map changed significantly, with many seats removed and numerous sections becoming untrackable. While it was unclear if the map was in transition, there have been no further changes since then, and it now shows limited ticket availability.

The show was originally scheduled to take place at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, AU. Initial VIP sales were encouraging but after that, much of the map was still available in large quantities of available tickets.

 

[Brandon Blaze]

Sometimes it just be like that. Hopefully wherever it moves to still looks nice.

 

[Lethal]

I'm not familiar with Brisbane but I think they have some arenas to hold it in. I said from the start that Brisbane was the wrong venue, Sydney and Melbourne have the larger population and wrestling audience. Sydney has QUDOS Arena which can hold 15-20k, Melbourne has Rod Laver Arena which holds similar. It's also the centre court of the Australian Open which keeps in the theme of "Grand Slam" as Arthur Ashe is the US Open court.

I'm gonna hold on buying a ticket until they announce something about it.

 

[Comrade Khan]

wise and for the best, good to do this early too. Hard market to penetrate, it took wwe a long ass time to get to a big venue here. clearly its going to take more work to get more fans in the market into the product, but as Lethal said and from what ive read from other aussies online, Brisbane is kind of a lame ass town that is not fun for holiday so that def is hurting them + lack of promotion

 

[Cwalker]

Smart decision to move.

As we learned with ECW 3 decades ago, if you fill the smaller venues to the max, it looks and sounds as good as the 50,000 seat stadiums being full

 

[Comrade Khan]

well you also dont want 10k in a 50k seater, that would look optically horrible on ppv

 

[Cwalker]

Was thinking that.

Didn’t Want to say it and come off negative

 

[Chris]

Yeah we've seen it happen, they're like historically some of the worst remembered shows lol Herb Abrams putting like 500 in MGM.

I think they jumped the gun a tad, but this is a bit of an uneducated opinion since I'm not in Australia obviously. But it sounded like they booked this show, then got the ESPN Australia deal after (which isn't a huge channel or anything as far as I'm aware) and the interest is going up steadily now with the TV but just not near enough to sell Brisbane decent. They needed to let the TV establish more fans for a bit longer probably but what's done is done, glad they're not sticking it out

 

[Comrade Khan]

Yeah we've seen it happen, they're like historically some of the worst remembered shows lol Herb Abrams putting like 500 in MGM.

I think they jumped the gun a tad, but this is a bit of an uneducated opinion since I'm not in Australia obviously. But it sounded like they booked this show, then got the ESPN Australia deal after (which isn't a huge channel or anything as far as I'm aware) and the interest is going up steadily now with the TV but just not near enough to sell Brisbane decent. They needed to let the TV establish more fans for a bit longer probably but what's done is done, glad they're not sticking it out

I think they are about 2 years too early for a stadium show here. maybe even more like 4-5 years on the long end. These things take a looooong time. WWE was not an international company overnight either. heck they really started getting crazy with it 2-3 years ago, like 40 years into the company

 

[Chris]

Putting it into TEW perspective, it's like Tony forgot how to play bc you don't run big venues in regions you just now got your TV airing in ffs the popularity takes forever to build

 

[Comrade Khan]

Putting it into TEW perspective, it's like Tony forgot how to play bc you don't run big venues in regions you just now got your TV airing in ffs the popularity takes forever to build

rumors are the gov was paying too so i think ya, they got a little too hype seeing money and deals coming in and forgot to maybe vet the territory for interest a bit and do more market research

 

[Chris]

rumors are the gov was paying too so i think ya, they got a little too hype seeing money and deals coming in and forgot to maybe vet the territory for interest a bit and do more market research

Australia pays for everything so I would have never doubted it. NJPW and TNA get kickbacks for coming

 

[Lethal]

Australia is buy and large rusted in for WWE. The ESPN channels exist but aren’t huge by any means. We also had/have Triller which was the original way to watch AEW on launch.

WWE once had like a 26-year gap or something between shows. A smaller venue is a good sample of how it can sell. QLD government essentially buying the event booked them into a corner too cos as I said, Melbourne or Sydney are the better markets and options.

 

[Lethal]

That’s the ‘biggest’ next option. There’s also a tennis centre that holds 7k.

 

[Chris]

Tennis center would make sense for the Grand Slam gimmick lol