The Secret Link Between AEW & WWE Nobody Is Talking About
Two weeks out from Double Or Nothing 2023 - effectively the fourth anniversary of the organisation and a tent pole event as a result - Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena has 3,000 tickets still available from a possible 10,000, which is scaled down from the venue's 20,000. The May 10th AEW Dynamite headlined by a Jon Moxley/Kenny Omega steel cage match felt like a conscious effort to address a ratings decline for the flagship show. May 3rd’s pulled 776,000 with a 0.28 in the key demo. Yet, in the same 24-hour period that number dropped, so too did Tony Khan’s tweet that AEW had sold 60,000 tickets for All In for a gate of $6.1m. These contrasts are surprising but not shocking. Both things can be true. And they were in 1992, too.
It had been over three years since WWE started running dates in the United Kingdom, but nothing on the scale of Wembley. The company had broadcast four live specials between 1989 and SummerSlam '92, and had been moved to hold the pay-per-view when they did because business had been so strong on a tour earlier that year. Post WrestleMania dates in Manchester, London, Brighton, Birmingham and elsewhere leading up to the Sheffield Arena's televised UK Rampage show did monster gates compared to those on home soil, and UK fans were buying merchandise at a rate comparable to the original Hulkamania boom in the 1980s.
Culturally, WWE was experiencing its second British boom, but 1992's was arguably bigger than the original Hogan/Warrior surge in the late-80s. Companies making sticker albums were saved from bankruptcy by the sheer volume of WWE sets being completed, Simon Cowell dragged wrestlers into the studio to get a novelty song out in time for Christmas, and Wembley's worked 80,355 attendance figure wasn't that giant a leap from the legitimate figure.
If WWE was struggling to keep or build momentum at home, you wouldn't know it from the state of things in their second-biggest market. AEW, with a near-identical timeframe, have pounced on the same opportunity.
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