General AEW Thread

[Comrade Khan]

Officially announcing that I am no longer a Daniel Garcia stan for this

That HEAT working you hard, brother

 

[Comrade Khan]

WON: “AEW has officially drawn the largest gate record in North America for any promotion other than the WWE. Double or Nothing on May 29 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas is at 12,939 tickets out for $1,145,000. There are only 585 tickets left”​

feels like a @Marvelous Me stat that he would enjoy

 

[Smart Marx]

WON: “AEW has officially drawn the largest gate record in North America for any promotion other than the WWE. Double or Nothing on May 29 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas is at 12,939 tickets out for $1,145,000. There are only 585 tickets left”​

feels like a @Marvelous Me stat that he would enjoy

Is this period or in a certain amount of years? This break the 1998 Georgia Dome gate for WCW?

Eitber way, that’s dope af. People will still say AEW ain’t competing, though. Just making money piles.

 

[Chris]

Is this period or in a certain amount of years? This break the 1998 Georgia Dome gate for WCW?

Eitber way, that’s dope af. People will still say AEW ain’t competing, though. Just making money piles.

WCW Top Attendance

oswreview.com

This is all I could find quickly cause I was curious myself but of these numbers are accurate then yeah way less fans too so you can blame inflation lmao

But if those numbers are accurate I think the NJPW show at MSG actually beat the WCW gate too bc I thought they did $1M, it just still wasn't a profitable show bc MSG cost so much for them to run and it was also that high of a gate due to high ticket prices

 

[Comrade Khan]

Is this period or in a certain amount of years? This break the 1998 Georgia Dome gate for WCW?

Eitber way, that’s dope af. People will still say AEW ain’t competing, though. Just making money piles.

I'd have to listen to the full episode but knowing Dave and his history stuff when it comes to gates etc I'm thinking this is all time so higher than WCW. Whic hmakes sense even just because of inflation but thats a lot of $ on a medium sized gate. I'm going to guess tickets have gone up in price

 

[Smart Marx]

I wonder if they factor in merch? Because it looks like that Georgia Dome show also had a quarter million in merch so that still seems like the second highest and shit inflation probably bumps that up too but that’s just good for wrestling though if both NJPW and AEW hitting million dollar gates recently.

 

[Chris]

I wonder if they factor in merch? Because it looks like that Georgia Dome show also had a quarter million in merch so that still seems like the second highest and shit inflation probably bumps that up too but that’s just good for wrestling though if both NJPW and AEW hitting million dollar gates recently.

Not for this stat they wouldn't I imagine but if the WCW show ends up still being higher with merch it'll be like an asterisks they'd mention...and knowing Meltzer he'd spend 20 minutes explaining how merch sales worked back them on top of it lol

 

[Smart Marx]

It’s honestly quite insane how quickly Tony turned AEW into a juggernaut. Even though I do think AEW is the best promotion in 2022, I don’t think he’s doing shit that different from TNA and ROH in 2002 so maybe the world wasn’t ready only a year after WCW collapsed to give an alternative a chance.

 

[Chris]

Regardless of prices and gates tho, they really selling this shit out months in advance with no indication of what major matches will be. Wild

 

[Comrade Khan]

It’s honestly quite insane how quickly Tony turned AEW into a juggernaut. Even though I do think AEW is the best promotion in 2022, I don’t think he’s doing shit that different from TNA and ROH in 2002 so maybe the world wasn’t ready only a year after WCW collapsed to give an alternative a chance.

high prduction (which roh didn't have) and weren't suicidal enough to go against raw (like tna did) I think are really the only two major difference (and tna eventually shot itself in the foot with bad creative, roh got gutted by NXT 1.0)

 

[Chris]

It's just money IMO. Early TNA did the PPV thing but it was years before they got on Spike (which was a big deal for wrestling at the time). AEW had the TNT deal their first year. Also wrestling fans are way more turned off on WWE than in 2002, AEW really caters to the ones that had turned to NJPW but would have preferred an American alternative instead

 

[Smart Marx]

high prduction (which roh didn't have) and weren't suicidal enough to go against raw (like tna did) I think are really the only two major difference (and tna eventually shot itself in the foot with bad creative, roh got gutted by NXT 1.0)

TNA didn’t go head to head until 2010.

TNA was on Spike on Thursdays from 2006-2009.

Tbeh still did pretty well, though. Did a million and half viewers weekly and grabbed almost every major star you could imagine in the late 2000’s. I think the two things that hurt them was not touring enough as they stayed in a sound stage most weeks and I do think the fans weren’t ready after WWE killed both WCW and ECW back to back in 2001.

 

[Comrade Khan]

It's just money IMO. Early TNA did the PPV thing but it was years before they got on Spike (which was a big deal for wrestling at the time). AEW had the TNT deal their first year. Also wrestling fans are way more turned off on WWE than in 2002, AEW really caters to the ones that had turned to NJPW but would have preferred an American alternative instead

a good point for sure. WWE hadn't erroded fan trust back then yet, so the thirst for a large and high end alternative wasn't really a need?

 

[Smart Marx]

It's just money IMO. Early TNA did the PPV thing but it was years before they got on Spike (which was a big deal for wrestling at the time). AEW had the TNT deal their first year. Also wrestling fans are way more turned off on WWE than in 2002, AEW really caters to the ones that had turned to NJPW but would have preferred an American alternative instead

Yeah, WWE was honestly still pretty fire in 2002.

It was around 2005 that I really became a huge diehard TNA guy as WWE shifted away from me.

 

[Comrade Khan]

I think it also helps that TK seems to very hands on and knowledgeable of business and has good relationship with people that matter. From what I heard, Dixie had some alterior motives for running TNA and it caused some disconnect