WWE's Clash At The Castle Ticketing Strategy Is Genuinely Baffling
WWE's Glasgow PLE should have been a guaranteed sell-out, and yet...
WWE's first ever Scottish pay-per-view hits Glasgow's OVO Hydro on Saturday, 15 June, but Clash at the Castle: Scotland is far from the red-hot ticket it should've been.
Plenty of tickets remain for an event many predicted to sell out within minutes. With its listed seated capacity of 12,306, the Hydro is dwarfed by WWE's last UK pay-per-view venue; Cardiff's Principality Stadium, to which the market-leading wrestling promotion reportedly drew over 62,000 fans for the original Clash at the Castle in September 2022.
WWE Clash at the Castle [FINAL COUNT]Sat, 3 Sept 2022, 15:00Principality Stadium, Cardiff, Wales
AdvertisementTickets Distributed => 62,215Announced attendance => 62,296[https://t.co/yRCOtL75Yu] pic.twitter.com/JGBFPEFKAS
— WrestleTix (@WrestleTix) September 4, 2022
This was at an average ticket price of $148.52 (roughly £118.46). With a paid attendance of 54,000, WWE generated around $8 million in revenue.
Average ticket price for Clash at the Castle was $148.52 (USD) and a paid attendance of 54,000.
WWE doesn't explicitly say these are Clash at the Castle numbers, but that was the lone international event during the quarter.https://t.co/4dqNhuZqbF pic.twitter.com/In4B8ZTfCz
Advertisement— Brandon Thurston (@BrandonThurston) November 2, 2022
An estimated 60,293 Clash at the Castle 2022 tickets (including comps) were distributed between the on-sale date of 18 May and 16 July. All in all, a successful event - to the extent that when WWE booked the Hydro for 2024's incarnation, eyebrows were raised. After drawing so much money in 2022, moving Clash at the Castle from a stadium to an arena seemed a major downgrade.
But where the decreased volume of available tickets in 2024 may result in lost revenue, a massive jump in prices could compensate. The get-in price for Clash 2024 was £390.40 at the time of writing - and that's for a restricted view seat. If you're looking for a non-resale ticket without a restricted view, prices start at £500.40.
That these are combination tickets that will get you into Clash and the previous night's SmackDown taping partly explains the price hike. Single-show tickets aren't currently available, and there hasn't been an announcement suggesting they will ever be. If you want to go to Clash, you must pay for SmackDown too.
WWE decreeing Clash and SmackDown should be combo-only events was likely done to boost the Friday show's attendance. Given the volume of tickets still available, it has come at the cost of buzz. If you want to attend Clash at the Castle in Glasgow, and you have the money, you can. No problem. This is not a hot ticket.
The approach is even more confusing given the unique, local competition WWE faces on Friday. A Scottish national football team resurgent in popularity and prominence under coach Steve Clarke kicks off its UEFA Euro 2024 campaign against hosts Germany that evening, clashing directly with SmackDown. Clash's ticketing options force potential pay-per-view attendees to buy a ticket for a rank-and-file weekly SD offering when they may rather be watching their home nation compete in only its second major tournament since 1998.
WWE will ultimately find ways to fill the Hydro. Whether through promotional deals, comps, or finally offering single-night tickets, the promotion will likely reach a point allowing it to claim a 'sell-out'. But they should've reached that point already. Given the Hydro's size, 2022's success, WWE's surge in public perception over the past few years, and the promise of a big Clash role for home country hero Drew McIntyre, this should have been one of the year's hottest tickets.
It could - and should - have packed a stadium.
Instead, it will limp to fill an arena a fraction the size of 2022's event.