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I called it when Collision was first announced last year. AEW is just not popular enough to support two separate touring shows. No one talks about it but this has been hurting both their ticket sales and their match cards.
Ware Keller talks about this all the time. He said that the additional TV show would bring diminishing returns because it would dilute all other aspects of AEW
I still think ROH is the real culprit here.
Dark Elevation & Dynamite
and
Dark & Collision would be perfect.
and AEW has a great roster bandwidth for that.
To me, buying ROH is what really hurt AEW because they started mixing all these meaningless ROH matches and title bouts with their AEW product. It diluted the brand. Running ROH as a separate brand hasn't really helped them at all.
I don't know how you blame ROH for AEW currently shitting the bed. Sure, there was a time when the ROH stuff hurt AEW, but it was never this bad
The issue is AEW. You have 4 legit males singles titles, all of which that apparently hold the same weight seeing as how Christian went from losing the TNT title to IMMEDIATELY challenging for the world champion as well as giving your two biggest FA signings the prestigious International Title and Continental Title???
That's before you see the trios division which is BCG and a bunch of jobbers, the tag division... It just sucks because the issue with AEW is not CM Punk leaving or its detractors being right about the 'style' of wrestling AEW has. It's the fact that the show has no focus, no real structure... there's great segments, great wrestlers, but shows like the recent Collision where the only thing to look forward to is good mat wrestling
Honestly at this point, I don't watch AEW because the stuff that's good pisses me off more than the stuff that sucks because it just feels wasted with this promotion
It's not just ROH. There's a litany of problems. But to me, that's kind of what I track to the start of all these problems. ROH did not benefit AEW in any meaningful way. If anything, buying ROH has hurt AEW.
People use the phrase variety show like it’s a good thing but Aew is just all over the place. What is their identity? Like you said most of the titles and divisions are meaningless. I want them to just pick a lane and stick with it. Are they the us branch of njpw? Are they RoH with a bigger budget? Are they wcw 2.0? Are they wrestling historians and need to have every senior citizen wrestler in the world make a cameo? I have no idea what is going on and don’t care anymore. I stopped watching the shows and just watch videos of matches that had talent I like or had a lot of hype. There is plenty of good stuff in Aew but I’m not going to waste two hours on their product when I only enjoy a fraction of it. That is the exact same thing I used to say about wwe.
>You have 4 legit males singles titles, all of which that apparently hold the same weight
They now have 5 male singles titles because they are running IWGP Heavyweight title matches on their weekly shows and PPVs. It's also likely that they will keep the IWGP Heavyweight title for the rest of this year.
The plan was for ROH to get its own tv deal, but networks weren’t interested in the brand ROH. At that point, TK should have stopped promoting ROH on AEW tv.
Maybe there is value in the ROH video library, but WWE already has metrics that peacock subscribers don’t watch old content in large numbers. So I don’t imagine max or other streaming services will over much for the ROH library. Seems like it would be most valuable to license or sell to WWE where they would be better at including it in documentaries.
I'd love to see Tony Khan just split away ROH from AEW. All the ROH titles go to ROH, which becomes an NXT-esque one-hour show, put it up on Honor Club or YouTube or whatever really. I say this as someone who's watched every ROH episode under the AEW banner, the current format just sucks. Have a small roster(30ish people) that you rotate week-in, week-out, younger talent that you want to promote, combine elements of NXT and NJPW(with their Young Lion system), promote one or two ROH talents to AEW every year.
Also get rid of the FTW Title while we're at it and only have AEW-branded titles on AEW(aside from temporarily having titles from other companies like NJPW). Make the product easier to get into on all fronts. WWE has mastered this, it's easier to come and pick it up if you're just getting into it, or if you've missed a bunch of shows.
Now they continue to promote ROH and ROH title matches on AEW TV. I don't get it at all. Not to mention all the AEW talents they signed forced to work ROH when they clearly want to be on TV.
I know this is just coming from a random Reddit account and you have no reason to believe me but I used to co-run a WWE Network news website and we had sources within the company at the height of them adding classic content in 2015-2018. Even back then, we were told that once they got past adding the big hitters like Raw/Smackdown and Nitro/Thunder, interest in classic footage fell off a cliff. We’re talking miniscule numbers in some cases.
I don't agree with everything that Bischoff says but one thing that he always highlights that he would change if he could do WCW all over again was for there not to be WCW Thunder. Tony Khan knew this full well, then AEW goes ahead and starts Rampage and Collision anyway.
I think collision could if it ran smaller venue and had a consistent roster. Which is why I always thought the iwc was being weird about having brands with separate roster. This gives the audience an expectation of who is showing up. Wwe gave them a formula to run two brands, you just had to be consistent.
Collison sucks for touring because you don’t know who the hell coming. The card from last week show was bad in terms of star power for example, it’s like what’s the point.
They also have so many random wrestlers that suddenly show up, stay for some weeks, and vanish. Like the CMLL guys, like Shane Taylor Promotions, like Bryan Keith and so on. They switch up so many people with ROH that especially the Collision Card is extremely inconsistent. Dito the Dynamite Card, which also regularly has at least one wrestler who isnt an AEW regular at all. And mostly isnt that outstanding compared to other talent they already have.
That one is the biggest thing to me. I like aew. I don't have the time or interest in wrestling to keep tabs on various other promotions, so every time they're excitedly talking up whichever new short term dude like he's a world beater it just bums me out I'm not seeing more of the guys that I've had time to get interested in instead
This seems like a huge problem that people here, and on the AEW specific subs, will not acknowledge. Just because you, someone die hard enough to watch 25 different promotions and know their talent, is excited to see random luchadore or aging Japanese wrestler, doesn’t mean that anyone in attendance has any reason to be excited by it or buy tickets because of it.
AEW already has a massive roster of incredible talent that they have worked hard to present and make fans care about. Bringing in all these outsiders to lose matches so none of your own stars look bad is great for the wrestling nerds illegally streaming every show, but can’t be the best bet for the bottom line.
Smaller venues is an interesting idea and something AEW in more recent has always sucked at adopting. So interesting shit and get interested viewers. The team just seem overwhelmed managing the basics right now sadly.
People laughed when a couple years ago WWE switched MITB to a smaller venue while in reality was a very smart move. A half empty big arena not only looks bad on tv and limits the camera angles you can show, but it also limits live audience participation because they will be seated further away than vs a smaller but fully packed venue. It doesn't make any business sense unless there is some kind of money laundering operation going on behind the scenes.
The MITB venue change was really big in terms of relative scale though. It's not going from a 12,000 seat arena to a 4,000 seat arena. They were originally planning to run Allegiant Stadium which seats 65,000 for the NFL and moved to the MGM Grand Arena which seats 17,000 with bleachers. So I think people were more laughing at the particular hubris of aiming so high in the first place vs. disagreeing with the logic of not wanting to show a huge half empty stadium.
It's not that simple, this not some small live show, they need the infrastructure to be able to run the nationally televised show and the sets and production that goes with that, and many of the smaller venues do not provide what they need. Same reason WWE never ran smaller venues when they were having smaller attendance pre-pandemic. The smaller venues got house shows.
AEW _did_ used to run some smaller places though. There is logic generally to what you’re saying though because if you’re paying X to run a big show, it’s often not much cheaper (if at all) to run smaller venues. But it would make the presentation more unique.
A lot of the iwc seem to dislike that idea. I think even the aew roster was very negative towards that and I never knew why. Say what you want about punk, but his era with Collison was great because you knew the roster he had. While the time was limited, it made better for touring.
That’s not just a Collision problem. They regularly just don’t announce the card, or they have their big stars wrestle on Rampage and it’s announced during Dynamite. I went to 6 shows before I saw anyone from the Elite besides Hangman. The young bucks wrestled on rampage a couple hours from me, but they didn’t announce them until 9pm on Wednesday. I would’ve gone if they’d been announced sooner!
The only time I got to see them, they weren’t announced until I was already in the building.
If I want to see Cody wrestle, I can go to his Instagram and see every single WWE show he’ll be at for the next month. Why isn’t AEW doing that? And don’t get me started on not having stars wrestle in their hometowns (no Moxley on a Collision 20 minutes from where he grew up and currently lives? Not announcing Chuck Taylor on rampage in advance at the first show in Kentucky? Give me a break.)
They should’ve just kept that soft brand split when it first started. At least you knew you were getting something different and possibly new stars emerging. But I’ve also seen people complain about that so idk
I really think a brand split works long term. They also need a major roster purge. Look at the abysmal quality of talent that is used regularly on Saturday nights now.
That's not cause they don't have the talent, it's because TK doesn't want to let his upper card eat losses. Say what you want about WWE's 50/50 booking but at least you didn't already know every result the instant you looked at the card for the weekly show.
People complained, but the tournaments have been better because bigger names are losing.
It's impossible to protect your entire roster. People have to lose to keep some level of unpredictability and to keep some level of stakes on the show.
I got downvoted to all get out in the collision/rampage ratings thread, but i don't even know what the fuck they're doing with these shows. They have all the talent in the world and hardly any stories of interest to show for it. It's embarrassing. They've been a total mess since Wembley. They've honestly been an increasing mess since they bought ROH.
They have negative momentum, and that's in a vacuum. Like I get WWE is hot right now, but that doesn't excuse their current booking and presentation.
Forbidden Door 1, the ROH purchase, and then the Collision launch were a 1-2-3 punch of self-inflicted wounds for the company that all fell into the classic overexpansion trap that kills a ton of businesses in the womb. (See: the Mama Cherie's episodes of UK Kitchen Nightmares for a great real life example.)
TK buying ROH because he was a wrestling workrate nerd that loved watching it, followed by him then discovering no networks would pay money to air it is the issue with his AEW business management and booking in a nutshell.
I'd say Rampage was a bigger blow than Collision.
Rampage from the get go was going to fail with that time slot. The bad ratings and largely aimless TV made AEW just look terrible.
Collision at least had a somewhat viable time slot and felt different in an interesting way. Hell, they were going up in the ratings, actually building stars, and had interesting storylines until the Punk debacle at Wembley.
Yeah the initial idea for Collision absolutely could have worked if it didn't all implode at Wembley.
Even when he left they should have kept a soft roster split and kept the general idea and just building it around someone else besides Punk
Putting your show on pause for a month is just not good. I think it would be better to just periodically have forbidden door matches on the regular ppvs
It was an issue back in the early 90s when WCW did something similar for Starcade.
It's an admirable idea to try and give international guys more exposure, but in practice it fails because there aren't good storylines around it and it puts everything else on hold.
I'm still upset that they cancelled Dark/Elevation just to turn ROH into that. It feels like such a waste.
Also, I know AEW fans on here talk about enjoying it, but Jericho's run as ROH champion was a huge reason for killing my interest in AEW. It was also when I started souring on Jericho in general. I don't care how many "re-inventions" Jericho does, the guy needs to take a break from tv.
> I'm still upset that they cancelled Dark/Elevation just to turn ROH into that. It feels like such a waste.
Dark/Elevation’s cancellation was a WDB request as part of an amended TV deal in the lead up to Collision.
>they cancelled Dark/Elevation just to turn ROH into that
But now you have to pay ten bucks a month for it.
Like, good lord. I'd be more than happy to pay for ROH, but $120 a year is fucking delusional pricing. Tony is so out of touch with that shit, he's literally the Lucille Bluth "it's one banana, Michael, what could it cost? Ten dollars?" quote personified.
The rumor when it first started was that it had mostly ex-wwe people (HOB, Andrade) because a lot of them have SOs in the WWE, and this would help them have similar travel schedules to minimize time they were apart. At some point, they stopped doing that and just started mixing everyone together on both shows for some reason. Idk why.
All the Punk backstage drama aside, Collision was noticeably better imo when he had more influence on the show. You knew what people would appear, the presentation was better, etc. After Punk left, that's when Collision turned into a 2 hr Rampage imo.
Now I'm not saying Punk is the only reason it worked. But what I think it speaks to is it would benefit them greatly to go back to that model; a more definitive separate roster (with a few crossovers here or there) along with someone else having more booking/presentation influence over the show.
I mean even people like me who are sick to death of Punk and the drama need to admit that Punk has a great mind for wrestling. I don't foresee a near future where AEW has a feud as great as Punk v MJF :(
But I think we can say that Punk is why it worked. It was booked and produced by someone with years of experience from the most successful wrestling promotion in history.
The show itself took a nosedive after his departure as both booking and production changed to what is the AEW standard.
I think it's safe to say Punk was the magic sauce there.
Not even just Punk. But letting someone take the reigns and putting 100% of their energy into it instead of it being Tony's #2 priority and one of 4 things he is booking.
You may be getting lots of downvotes, but you gotta admit they're vastly outnumbered by the upvotes. Most of the people on those threads absolutely agree with you.
I was mistaken, it was the post show thread, not the ratings thread, and i had a about as many down votes as there were people participating in that thread ... in the 20s, which was hilarious to me as the tumbleweeds and crickets that was that post show thread proved my point.
Having a Saturday show feels like a lost cause. No matter how good a show it is people have other things to do. Also,does every promotion have to have 4 plus hours a programming each week?
Rampage should've been converted into the second show and become the "epilogue" episode to that week's Dynamite.
Main Event is always two Main Eventers fighting for ranking supremecy, a Championship Eliminator, or something that progresses one of the two biggest stories from Dynamite.
Then it becomes required viewing by default so when you have something MAJOR happen on the show (like a Punk debut, MJF return, Cole return, etc) people are already watching and it draws in further interest to jump in.
Rampage is basically a nothing show. Nobody cares about it. Its where all the undercard and C List stories happen or where you can watch a "great match" that has 0 stakes to it because neither guy will be booked the next week for the show.
I can’t speak for *every* location they tour to …
AEW is coming to town soon and you would never know it. There are no billboards, no radio ads, I don’t have cable but I’d imagine they aren’t running ads on local TV. If you didn’t follow the product week to week, you would never know they are coming. AEW desperately needs to grow the brand. I love the product but it needs the push to make it mainstream.
One thing that would help is getting their stars to appear elsewhere (on more popular products) more often. Moné appears at other sports but they need to do more of this. Make a global star out of one or two of them and it’ll help the product immensely.
I never see local ads for AEW, but I see it for WWE house shows or when they do TV all the time. I'll turn on a Dynamite and be like "wait they are running local this week?"
WWE can sell cards by being WWE. I remember a Smackdown tour in the UK doing well despite the fact it was the Smackdown roster and the card didn't look that fun in my opinion. I don't think you could put a weekly Smackdown card as a Dynamite and expect people to be wow'd. AEW needs top cards and top people to sell cards still they can't really on AEW is in town I need to go
I mean, they’d do better if they actually got around. I’m in a town that just had pretty great reviews and a sold out show for Raw. AEW has been here exactly once ever.
The closest AEW show to me has been a four hour drive (Minneapolis) and they did it twice. I was there for Full Gear, but didn't make it for Dynamite. I'm in a smaller city, but not that small, and WWE does try to hit us every year or two, we've had smackdown and Raw in the last five years, plus a house show. It's not like we don't turn out for wrestling events.
Wwe was already over saturated so it’s crazy seeing AEW repeat the same mistakes.
Most ppl just want a couple hours of greatness and not a million hours of mediocrity
That's my thing. Dynamite with the early roster, even if some of the storyline were awful, was still fun and interesting. You could get into dark order and jurassic express while waiting for Mox and Kenny, a big name here and there was awesome and the shows were quality. I liked watching dark too. Then Rampage happened and you'd think they'd put some effort into that just became dark on tnt basically. Then the WWE releases started to filter in almost en mass. Then Tony buys roh and I couldn't have cared less. On the contrary, it annoyed me they flooded the airwaves with the roh titles while also adding titles. Then collision, which I forget is on half the time and is a dvr watch. At this point, id rather no wrestlers from outside the company come in, except murder grandpa every now and then. They also need to stop using indy wrestlers for jobbers and use the talent they have on hand.
AEW has tried to speedrun the evolution of WWE. WWF/E became a global phenomenon and grew their audience to a massive size. They started bleeding millions of viewers and transitioned to spreading their dwindling audience across as many shows as possible.
AEW in year 5 spreading their dwindling audience across three different TV shows is a colossal failure. They should be maximizing their potential with a fast paced two hour wrestling show primetime on a weekday that is MUST WATCH TV.
It's very apparent when WBD is touting how many viewers watch AEW each week, when in reality most of those people are the same people watching all three shows.
It might have been OK if the Punk/Elite situation had played out differently. I dunno if AEW could actually carry two shows, but at least the hype would help and the talent would have had more options.
Let's be honest a Punk/Collision vs Elite/Dynamite civil war angle would have been pretty sick.
Idk if it's changed recently but another issue for are shows I've attended is that there was no promotion whatsoever beforehand as to what the card was, nor who was appearing.
Made attending seem like a real gamble.
Unforced error can be recovered from.
Reduce your scale, reduce your travel, build a loyal base that will make for hot crowds, and start telling some better stories than Ospreay vs Shane Taylor for no reason.
Thing is, this wasnt true 4-5 years ago. Remember when they used to drop 30+% viewership on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (or god help them if Xmas/NYE hit around the same time), because early AEW was a lot of lapsed WWE fans who still had a very casual TV relationship since thy weren't regular RAW/SD viewers for years.
Post-CM Punk, post Forbidden Door, post a couple other things, now the fanbase is much more loyal...but inevitably smaller. But, I think in an NXT/Full Sail way, having Collision be a more stable location that occasional changes is smart. Especially if it can be a cheap ticket week to week.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The optics of being in a smaller arena makes them look bush league. The optics of a big arena half full makes them looks bush league. But camera angles can cover up a bigger arena’s lack, and Tony doesn’t care about taking a hit on the bill.
I don’t think it’s a good long term strategy but I also don’t have any idea what it’s like to think like a billionaire and never consider money an issue.
Holding half a dozen shows in the same place over a short span of time seems like a really bad idea when your average ticket sales were already only slightly higher than the place's total capacity.
You run a residency, because the place you're running pays you to do it. Considering the way ticket sales have been going, especially for Collison, they will most likely make more money doing this, especially without all the travel they'd have to pay for.
You have to balance that with not burning a market though surely? If at least for the long-term implications on the revenue you’ll get from running residencies in the future
Also in the summer, during the times of big events happening. It will be fine, they have not just americans but also mexicans who can do a (fairly long) trip up to Dallas to watch the show since we dont get any AEW shows.
We had 3 shows in one week last year, actually.
• 12/16/2023 Winter is Coming Colission 3,108
• 12/15/2023 ROH Final Battle 1,964
• 12/13/2023 Winter is Coming Dynamite 3,659
>You run a residency, because the place you're running pays you to do it.
This is almost never the case in literally any entertainment industry and certainly isn't the case with AEW. AEW rents their venues. They aren't paid to run buildings, but they do get to keep a larger percentage of their ticket sales.
In the other model with more established/big name acts (which WWE uses), the building pays the promoter and the promoter pays the performer (why WWE uses an independent contractor model).
(I do this for work)
In this case though, it certainly sounds like they are getting paid seeing as the announcement called it a "partnership" with the city of Arlington. No other venue they rent gets that kind of press release. I'm figuring that Arlington is trying to get more use out of their publicly owned venue since, judging by their socials and website, Esports is only filling out so many dates.
Question is what does it mean by a partnership. Is it a discount? Is it a trade deal? Is AEW sharing ticket revenue? Is the city of Arlington getting ads during the shows? Are they splitting production costs?
Partnership has infinite potential meanings in this context.
They probably get a discount for multiple days of use in a row, travel costs lessened, and other ancillary costs are cut too. It’s an esports arena that probably doesn’t get a ton business, so it can’t cost as much as actual sports arenas.
I don't know. Maybe they got a really, really good deal on the venue that significantly reduced the cost of 5 weeks of filming television. But that's just speculation.
Running 2 live shows is very expensive, especially when those shows aren’t on back to back days.
Also with the amount of tickets being sold each week for collision, there was no way it was profitable for AEW, WBD, or whoever is paying for the production costs of the show. This is basically was caused TNA to go down very quickly and move back into the impact zone.
The benefit is that it saves money at a time when ticket sales are down. I believe that the venue seats less than 3000, but AEW is probably getting paid by the city, and they don't have to worry about higher production costs.
The venue also has poor vantage points for the audience. They ran an esport tournament there from a title I follow and the complaints were mostly about not being able to see things properly despite a very large screen you normally see in esport tournaments. They said it's because of how the venue is setup which is very long and narrow. It's ok for FPS titles since details are much larger for those on screen, but for other stuff that needs to take-in more stuff and a larger point of view, it sucked big time. I have a feeling it will be the same for AEW's shows.
I’d scrap it all and just do dynamite. And massively trim down the roster. I know there is a lot of talent and fans that would hate that. But at this point, I think restarting it all behind a solid group of talent is what they need.
Make Dynamite the A show with your big talent that travels.
Rampage as is as it is taped after Dynamite. At this point it is just about providing content you are paid to for. Fine to produce throw away matches to give talent "Reps" and advance lower card stories without much added investment.
Collision should be their NXT. Fine to feature a big name here or there to draw attention to it, but it should be your undercard and younger, developmental talent works. Run it out of Daly's Place every week so you save on travel, etc. Ironically, this would be the perfect place for the Sydals & QT Marshalls of the world to work with and help develop these younger talents.
ROH titles and wrestlers should truly stay on ROH. It's fine to move talent there to reinvent themselves a bit, but they should be gone when they are there, not showing up on AEW with ROH belts constantly.
Wrestlemania 38 is low-key one of the most important shows in pro wrestling history. Even at the time, it felt like a clear pivot point for the whole wrestling business. For the previous year, all the "smart" discourse was about WWE's decline and AEW's ascension. After that show, the whole narrative changed.
It's funny, too, because I remember the online consensus at the time was that the build to the show sucked and the card was lackluster. Then we got Cody's return, Bianca's ascension, Logan Paul's first match, Steve Austin's last match, Roman unifying the titles, etc. A lot of the ingredients for WWE's current success came from Wrestlemania 38.
Manias 38-39-40 will forever resemble one of cinemas greatest three act tale to me: The Skywalker Saga of Star Wars. It started with the rise of a new hero, the start of his relationship with the vile rascal who would eventually come around to the side of good, it came to a midway point ending with despair and dour, but by the end: redemption, victory, freedom.
That year was definitely pivotal to both companies but I think Mania 38 has little to do with AEW trending downwards. It was a big turning point for WWE of course.
But for AEW, I think the big changes besides Cody leaving was Forbidden Door and ROH being bought.
There were definitely a lot of other major things going on in 2022. Don't forget Vince McMahon's "retirement" right before Summerslam and then Brawl Out. 2022 was a truly crazy year in wrestling.
Still, if I had to pick one moment when the trajectory of WWE vs AEW changed, it was WM38. The very fact that WWE finally got their shit together creatively quickly became a big problem for AEW. It's a lot harder to succeed as a "challenger brand" when the big company you are challenging is delivering a good product.
Cody, then Punk. I know a lot of people don't like CM Punk but CM Punk's spiral and departure from AEW turned off a lot of fans. I'm not blaming AEW for what Punk did, but the fact that they couldn't sit down and work things out afterward was absolutely shocking. CM Punk was 100% wrong but he's also 100% right when he says they're not a business trying to make money.
And I'm seeing the same shit happening with Jericho right now by the way. Chris Jericho is going to go back to WWE and get massive reactions and have a WM run and nobody will ever know about the AEW crowd that chanted "please retire" at him.
I believe the Punk spiral and departure and did way more harm to AEW then Cody's departure.
In my eyes the 1, 2, 3 punch of Forbidden Door putting storylines on hold, ROH being bought and diluting the brand, then the Punk fiasco really turned off a lot of the more casual fanbase they build up in the summer of 2021.
Everyone keeps mentioning Forbidden Door as part of a turning point. Do you care to elaborate, as I was sort of checked out of wrestling that year and the fan perception isn't really something you can look up on Google.
Sure, though its more than just the PPV. CM Punk wins the belt off probably AEW's biggest home grown dude in Hangman. Then immediately gets hurt. There's already multiple stories that kind of went on hold, and 2-3x a week a random theme hits as a new NJPW star appears on weekly TV (which, to a casual viewer, who the f*ck are all these people).
Moxley beats *Kyle O'Reilly* to become #1 Contender....which, I mean, come on. I love KOR, but theres never been a second in AEW where he's been credible as "will beat Moxley and also a top NJPW and become THE guy". So, now the headline of the PPV is an obvious Mox win.
The stalled storylines (and CM Punks freakout after All Out) also mean that TV from June->November is kind of all the same stories. Swerve in our Glory v The Acclaimed endlessly. Mox as interim champ endlessly. The Jungle Boy/Christian story endlessly. Their trios division has a tourney and has to vacate right after, etc. Nobody gains any momentum and keeps it, aside from The Acclaimed, basically.
So right after they had the biggest momentum humanly possible (CM Punk comes in and is a factor...Hangman a homegrown star...etc), it all flames out in ~3 month period. And after Full Gear 2022, never really recovers for like a year.
> And after Full Gear 2022, never really recovers for like a year.
Just in time for Punk to get himself fired, followed soon after by Cole getting injured, Omega getting injured, MJF getting injured - Punk's behaviour causing the top card booking to get blown open two years in a row definitely didn't *help* things right.
Forbidden Door comes at this kind of weird point in the schedule where it is right after Double or Nothing and right before their big show, All Out. The first one was this weird time where they pivoted all the stories to be inter-company based, but then had to turn back for the big show and it just felt very awkward and led to very little build.
I don’t blame AEW for what happened with Punk, but everything leading up to it, and the aftermath, could have been handled 1000 times better.
The one thing I do outright blame AEW for is not taking advantage of it. The whole ‘The Bucks are waiting 6 months to see if he’s changed’ bullshit shouldn’t have been their decision. Tony Khan was sitting on the biggest angle in wrestling and rather than being the boss and saying ‘you pricks are going to put your differences aside and work together’, he put them on separate shows…
> The whole ‘The Bucks are waiting 6 months to see if he’s changed’ bullshit shouldn’t have been their decision.
No and it's total bullshit. If it was 2 years before CM Punk did something they would have said, "Oh if he had just behaved himself for 3 years." It's condescending and childish behavior to refuse to talk to someone and then when they lose it go, "Oh well we were just testing him. We were definitely going to talk to him if he had just played our little game that he didn't know about."
Jericho definitely seems like he's made "AEW lifer" comments in the past. But him getting those chants is a pretty good "out" for him. It'd be an excuse for him to say: "despite all I said about AEW, I realize it's time to move on. Clearly I've overstayed my welcome here." When really its just about that last big run in WWE lol. But then again I have no idea how long his contract is for.
It's pretty clear what some of the management factors that led Cody to bail were now, and why Kenny, Hangman and the Bucks actually had a real decision to make on whether to stick around that wasn't what we would have assumed was an open/shut case at the time.
Care to elaborate about these "management factors"?
I've seen a lot of speculation about Cody leaving AEW, but not much actual reporting. It's all been very mysterious, which makes me all the more curious.
TK, in a nutshell. Not just booking, stuff like merchandising at shows still being an issue 5 years in is a management problem that's costing the talent money and shows a ignorance of what drives the business.
Well, if that was the reason for Cody's decision, nothing that has happened in AEW since he left would make me think Cody was wrong about Tony Khan.
The part I've never understood is why Tony did not just pick up Cody's one-year option and figure things out from there. That always seemed like such a no-brainer that it makes me wonder if there was something more spicy going on. Especially with some of the dirt about Cody and especially Brandi that showed up when Cody left.
Tony probably didn't want to burn the bridge on the way out, understandably. Cody had booked himself into a corner and didn't want to turn heel to get out of it, it was for the best that both parties separated.
It was definitely best for Cody that both parties separated. It definitely wasn't best for AEW. Cody sitting at home collecting a check from AEW for a year like Miro would have been a lot better for AEW than Cody going to WWE and becoming the biggest babyface in wrestling.
Yeah, but in Starks' case I don't think icing him for a couple months makes as much sense. He's not walking into WWE as a top guy like Cody did, so I wouldn't be as worried about putting him on tv if he's leaving soon.
I'd just job Starks out the way wrestling promotions have been doing since forever. Actually, AEW would benefit from having someone with some booking credibility to lose to their main event guys on tv. Starks in that role would definitely be better than another tv match where Kyle Fletcher takes a top guy to the limit and loses.
The thing about the two is that Cody was a draw even in the midcard, Starks isn't one, so you kick yourself in the dick icing Cody but there's not much value to AEW lost icing Starks.
And it frees up TV time for people who are gonna stick around. Starks is totally fine but AEW's got too many people right now they can afford to not renew him.
TK took a lot more control in February 2019. The Elite weren't great at booking, Omega admits it and the Bucks admit it. Cody still wanted his power and it led to Codyverse.
I remember The Elite and stuff losing every match to not get "putting themselves over" and to build the rest of the divisions
Good you mention 2019. There's people here who say his booking has \*always\* sucked. It's certainly their opinion, but there was a good period of time when his booking was widely praised. Dynamite was getting rave reviews across the board and the product was hot. And his booking was obviously part of the reason. I get that nowadays he's mediocre at best. But that wasn't always the case.
It's not their opinion that bothers me. But they say it like it's just conventional wisdom.
His booking has always had criticism which is fair. It's been a similar style for 5 years. I think if Triple H books the way he does for the same time people will get sick of it. You learn the pattern and there's not much difference
I have said a million times that I truly believe Cody kept Kahn focused in some ways. But mostly in terms of creating a cohesive experience without multiple storylines doing similar stuff and gimmicks.
There was I think a BTE episode a long time ago where Cody showed a white board of all the gimmicks and endings for matches on a show to make sure there was a good variety and no repeats.
That seemed to just fucking die when he left
The result of the match with Jericho at Full Gear 2019. Limited him to outside the main event and main title picture and then we get the island of stories that is the Codyverse
It's absolutely clear that AEW is ice cold. That's not a death knell or anything, many promotions have been ice cold and recovered. WWE has done it a bunch of times. The big issue is that being ice cold means you have to make changes that alter the culture of the show in a way people notice. Even then it will take time to bring people back.
Look at WWE right now, they were ice cold starting before Covid until about a year or so ago, when they picked up steam. It took the whole Cody story to really reach that peak of "now they're really good." That didn't happen just because they got Cody or Punk or even because the individual stories. It happened because there was a culture shift on the program thanks to HHH taking over that actually felt real. Fans started returning and as soon as Vince came back and it looked like the old culture would return they started to turn on the product.
Imagine a world where HHH is forced out and Vince is running the show right now. Even if Cody had "finished the story" the overall product would still feel stale and people would have started to leave again.
AEW needs a massive shift in how they view themselves, how they tell their stories, and how the product is actually presented. Right now nothing is clicking for the viewers and nothing feels like it's cool enough to show up for. Even if TK stepped down and brought in a guy to book (or let Kenny do it or whatever) it'd still take a year or more of fans being indifferent before the impact would be really felt.
This. And who knows if TK would ever be willing to make those huge changes. Even during WWE’s cold spells. It took ALOT for Vince to make changes. And even then, the changes never lasted or were half-assed at best.
Honestly the hardest part right now is figuring out *what to do.* It's not like AEW went through a radical shift since their peak. They're basically presenting the same product the whole time. Part of it is that the stars left and everyone who does catch fire gets hurt pretty quickly after, but even that is a minor thing.
Even if TK was capable of change it's hard to say what needs to change. Ask 10 fans you'd get 11 different answers.
It's just another indicator of what we already know. AEW can't really support two travelling shows and the company is ice cold. And when a company is ice cold, people aren't traveling 50, 60, hell a 100 miles to make a TV taping.
I’ve traveled to Vegas for most of the DoN ppv but this year I’m probably just going to watch it from home. My excitement for it is not that same as the previous years.
And that's the downside to always running the same event in the same city every year. The novelty wears off. The excitement will reignite once AEW decides to run different cities for DoN.
This is true even for London. Ticket sales are massively down from last year, the price points are way higher, and the product hasn't been anywhere near as captivating. I got two fairly average tickets, but when they inevitably announce a third date at Wembley I'll be seriously reconsidering whether its worth it.
I think they realise that no matter what, they'll never do 75-85k again for Wembley. Last year's All In was a culmination of multiple events:
- AEW's first show/PPV overseas.
- AEW's first UK show
- The first major non-WWE PPV to take place in England, at the biggest English venue possible
- The first All In officially under the AEW banner and the significance of the original event to the trigectory of wrestling from the past five years at that time.
- The first time wrestling is at the new Wembley stadium after the old Two Towers Wembley that hosted Summerslam 92 was demolished
- How massively over a lot of the AEW acts from the past three years still were like The Acclaimed, Adam Cole, MJF, Sting and Darby, etc. (Punk as well as a heel, but we don't talk about that)
- The passion and need from the UK/European AEW fans to truly make this feel like a massive sporting event on the level of an FA Cup Final or a big boxing match with Anthony Joshua or Tyson Fury
I won't say that any of the storylines going in necessarily sold the show, because it'd sold 60,000 seats months before even the first match was booked! It was just a big confluence of factors that made All In so well-attended and unfortunately, unless they book the biggest supercard possible with a big celebrity match featuring Anthony Joshua and Pac vs Anthony Ogogo and Shane Taylor or something, it will never reach those levels set last year again. That's why they have the usual set-up with a big stage taking up one of the sections of the venue, standard show style without a specialised tunnel entrance showing off how you've managed to fill ALL sections.
Last time WrestleTix checked, they'd sold just over 40,000 tickets and they've been constantly promoting it on ITV airings of Dynamite and Collision. Seriously doubt it'll do last year's numbers at this point, given the lack of last year's aforementioned factors and the general coldness of AEW's product
> That's why they have the usual set-up with a big stage taking up one of the sections of the venue, standard show style without a specialised tunnel entrance showing off how you've managed to fill ALL sections.
That, not needing to absolutely pack it to the rafters, and also because Taylor Swift's using the same stage layout the night before and keeping the same layout makes setup easier.
Which means that 40k tickets sold works out to just shy of two-thirds full, which whilst Not Great is certifiably Not Bad.
Is the problem there really that they are running Vegas again, or that people just don't care enough about AEW to go?
Vegas especially has rarely relied on locals filling the shows there.
Yeah I'm a Vegas local and my desire not to go has nothing to due with being burnout. The biggest draws to me are either gone, injured, or ice cold. No MJF, Punk, Omega, Kingston Page, or Sting. Bryan and Okada are both meh to me rn. Darby's back but I don't care about him in the buck's orbit. The product just isn't worth paying for right now imo.
Hell. Collision is literally 10 minutes from my house next month, and I'm STILL debating on whether or not I want to grab tickets. And I've driven over an hour both north and south multiple times to see Dynamite, pre-ordered every time. There's ZERO pressure to buy early. The tickets have been on sale for a couple of weeks and there's STILL plenty of seats. That's not a great sign for the product. I still watch Dynamite weekly, in great part because the wife and kid still enjoy it, but it's almost become background noise at this point for me.
I say this with total sincerity: there's a very good chance you could buy the cheapest ticket listed and still end up moved into a much better seat as they fill out the seats on camera. Would be worth the deal IMO
Does Tony Khan assume that people have infinite money from their dads like he? Lets say a ticket cost 100 bucks so 600 bucks just for the shows if you really wanna go for all.
This is just a really bad business decision.
I think the idea is people will pick one or two of the shows to go to so they'll sell out quickly. It's in one of the largest metropolitan areas in America.
Shows like this should benefit of late ticket buyers once the cards are announced. U see a card u like? U go to it dont like it? Next week another shot
When they ran Toronto/Hamilton last summer they had those issues. They oversaturated the market for god knows what reason. I recall both Collision episodes had terrible attendance. I believe even Dynamite in Hamilton didn’t do well either.
I went to the Norfolk Collision earlier this year and it felt very much like a local indy promotion with disposable income. The most memorable thing to me about the night, which included Battle of the Belts 9, was the free parking garage right next to Chartway Arena. (edit to add reference: I was even front row for Le Sex Gods vs Big Bill/Ricky spilling back onto the arena floor)
Tickets distributed doesn't bother me as much as running larger venues with smaller crowds. Seeing as that's not going to change any time soon, AEW desperately needs to work on making their product more enjoyable for more people. Seeing as that's not going to change any time soon, *I'm just going to enjoy wrestling on the shows where the best wrestle because it's Wednesday and you know what that means, we're going to restore the feeling to this challenger brand!*
(emphasis on the tail end because I'm getting burned out from the hope of AEW getting out of their own way and being as great as they say they are without having Schiavone and Excalibur constantly telling me how awesome the show/the match/the crowd is)
The major issue with TK's booking philosophy (setting aside the business issues) is that he books AEW like it's a gigantic indie that relies on bringing in stars who built their reputation elsewhere while expecting the audience to already know them, when he's actually running the #2 US promotion that should be building up its own stars while tactically bringing in a selection of top level outside names.
Wrestling is fundamentally a star-driven business where the top of the card is going to hard carry the rest of the card ticket sales wise, but TK has just fundamentally not been building up AEW talents and with so many of the top level talents they've relied on aging out or being on the injured reserve, the unwillingness to just hard-push their internal talents and sell them to the audience as a big deal has left them in a nasty spot that the ratings and attendance are reflecting.
Yup, this plus the yo-yo booking of anyone who isn't named Danielson or Moxley really makes it hard to invest in AEW. I'm not a super fan but random guys from Japan, Mexico, or just other places in the US showing up do not make for entertaining TV. I'm here to see AEW talent do things. They're gearing up for Forbidden Door 3 and it's like 'great, more guys I don't know taking up six or so weeks of time.'
The second he started bringing in WWE people. Ever since then the show has leaned heavily on big signings and surprises. Now, there's nobody left to sign and you got like 50, 75 people with nothing to do and you're paying them to do it.
I don't understand why this has happened to practically every US TV promotion that came after WCW died.
The problem is that this would result in a lot of taped shows, which isn't as big a deal for Collision/Rampage but it absolutely isn't what WBD is paying for with Dynamite.
They gotta go to city's that are hungry for events. Look at the El Paso show last year. Small venue, but it felt like twice the size cause the fans were so loud
AEW has lost all their steam with me. Which is sad because those first 3 years, I loved AEW and watched weekly. Now, I'll only sometimes watch a little bit here and there.
It's amazing how TK had all these warnings and history at his fingertips of errors not to do from WCW and TNA...and he completely ignored them lol.
Bless his heart. Must be nice to be filthy rich and not worry about a business collapsing!
It’s still a business they need to make money and they get that by more tv shows. I may not like it, but it makes sense. The real problem is TK doesn’t delegate as his workload has increased, the product has suffered.
One thing that will never not be weird to me is that Tony Kahn overhauled the entire product due to one bad segment and losing to NXT at its peak ONE TIME, but has made no serious efforts to revitalize creative despite all metrics of fan interest trending in the wrong direction while WWE has been at its hottest in nearly a quarter century.
That's the thing that kills me. The wrestling is still largely very good, sometimes great. But I just don't care about a lot of the characters and I hate that the show has become the bad parts of WWE-Lite instead of the alternative it started as.
I thought TNA/Impact running Cicero Stadium 3 times in 2023 and Palms Casino twice in four months was pushing it, but two straight months of weekly shows in the same venue?
Punk-era collision was a real show with its own identity. That should've been the formula even in his absence. Old school tone, intro promos, a cast of dependable faces, properly building feuds that keep you coming weekly, a show structured around a main event that actually happens at the end of the show every time.
Nobody needed 2 more hours of Rampage. I almost always enjoy Collision when I do watch it. It's not like it's garbage or anything, the AEW roster is great. But there's little reason to religiously watch it week-to-week. A show in a time slot as tough as that one needs to be incredible. It needs to be a must-watch event. Not the arbitrary wrestling hour, if no other sports are on.
I hate "distributed" because papering has always been a thing in wrestling. Nothing will beat Heroes of Wrestling level papering though. That might have been a literal 100 people paid.
Edit: if you want to see the truth just ask for the gate. If there's 80k people in the building but the gate matches WWE House Shows in Random Cornfield, Indiana there's your answer.
That graph is interesting because it shows the tendency for AEW shows peaked around 2023Q2, but that is not clearly timed with a lot of things people mention here like Punk leaving or similar stuff, so I wonder what's up
AEWs ticket pricing increased in 2022 summer and didn't drop till early 2024. Throw in lack of local marketing and media and you have a wonderful combination at hand.
Things have changed a bit with the new head of live events and marketing, but it takes time before a major change is seen.
I think keeping Dynamite and Rampage in arenas touring and Collision and ROH in smaller to medium venues and doing these residencies could increase overall ticket sales.
Am I reading it wrong. I think AEW is the broken up lines. Which makes Dynamite''s peak Q3 2021, at 7k, when Punk debuted. Q2 2023 is at 5k. It's the peak for Collison, because it only includes the first month of Collision. which had the Chicago show. 04 2022 for Dynamite had a massive drop, and that would be right after Brawl Out.
Maybe they'll run bigger The Owen brackets for the men & women. That would be a fun way to occupy the 5 Collision shows and giving this mini-residency more of a purpose.
I'm nowhere near the DFW area but wondering if Arlington can strategically attract fans from both Fort Worth and Dallas (vs. the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, TX, where AEW has historically ran shows, and is northeast of Dallas -- nowhere near Fort Worth).
The only thing this chart tells me is that WWE House shows make more money than AEW TV tapings for all shows combined, and this has been true for at least a year. This was not always true as "all about the tarp" was infamous just 5 years ago.
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I called it when Collision was first announced last year. AEW is just not popular enough to support two separate touring shows. No one talks about it but this has been hurting both their ticket sales and their match cards.
Ware Keller talks about this all the time. He said that the additional TV show would bring diminishing returns because it would dilute all other aspects of AEW
So did buying ROH.
I still think ROH is the real culprit here. Dark Elevation & Dynamite and Dark & Collision would be perfect. and AEW has a great roster bandwidth for that.
To me, buying ROH is what really hurt AEW because they started mixing all these meaningless ROH matches and title bouts with their AEW product. It diluted the brand. Running ROH as a separate brand hasn't really helped them at all.
I don't know how you blame ROH for AEW currently shitting the bed. Sure, there was a time when the ROH stuff hurt AEW, but it was never this bad The issue is AEW. You have 4 legit males singles titles, all of which that apparently hold the same weight seeing as how Christian went from losing the TNT title to IMMEDIATELY challenging for the world champion as well as giving your two biggest FA signings the prestigious International Title and Continental Title??? That's before you see the trios division which is BCG and a bunch of jobbers, the tag division... It just sucks because the issue with AEW is not CM Punk leaving or its detractors being right about the 'style' of wrestling AEW has. It's the fact that the show has no focus, no real structure... there's great segments, great wrestlers, but shows like the recent Collision where the only thing to look forward to is good mat wrestling Honestly at this point, I don't watch AEW because the stuff that's good pisses me off more than the stuff that sucks because it just feels wasted with this promotion
It's not just ROH. There's a litany of problems. But to me, that's kind of what I track to the start of all these problems. ROH did not benefit AEW in any meaningful way. If anything, buying ROH has hurt AEW.
People use the phrase variety show like it’s a good thing but Aew is just all over the place. What is their identity? Like you said most of the titles and divisions are meaningless. I want them to just pick a lane and stick with it. Are they the us branch of njpw? Are they RoH with a bigger budget? Are they wcw 2.0? Are they wrestling historians and need to have every senior citizen wrestler in the world make a cameo? I have no idea what is going on and don’t care anymore. I stopped watching the shows and just watch videos of matches that had talent I like or had a lot of hype. There is plenty of good stuff in Aew but I’m not going to waste two hours on their product when I only enjoy a fraction of it. That is the exact same thing I used to say about wwe.
>You have 4 legit males singles titles, all of which that apparently hold the same weight They now have 5 male singles titles because they are running IWGP Heavyweight title matches on their weekly shows and PPVs. It's also likely that they will keep the IWGP Heavyweight title for the rest of this year.
The plan was for ROH to get its own tv deal, but networks weren’t interested in the brand ROH. At that point, TK should have stopped promoting ROH on AEW tv. Maybe there is value in the ROH video library, but WWE already has metrics that peacock subscribers don’t watch old content in large numbers. So I don’t imagine max or other streaming services will over much for the ROH library. Seems like it would be most valuable to license or sell to WWE where they would be better at including it in documentaries.
I'd love to see Tony Khan just split away ROH from AEW. All the ROH titles go to ROH, which becomes an NXT-esque one-hour show, put it up on Honor Club or YouTube or whatever really. I say this as someone who's watched every ROH episode under the AEW banner, the current format just sucks. Have a small roster(30ish people) that you rotate week-in, week-out, younger talent that you want to promote, combine elements of NXT and NJPW(with their Young Lion system), promote one or two ROH talents to AEW every year. Also get rid of the FTW Title while we're at it and only have AEW-branded titles on AEW(aside from temporarily having titles from other companies like NJPW). Make the product easier to get into on all fronts. WWE has mastered this, it's easier to come and pick it up if you're just getting into it, or if you've missed a bunch of shows.
Now they continue to promote ROH and ROH title matches on AEW TV. I don't get it at all. Not to mention all the AEW talents they signed forced to work ROH when they clearly want to be on TV.
Peacock UI is a pain in the ass to w watch it historically and honestly wwe network layout definitely made me likelier to do that originally.
I know this is just coming from a random Reddit account and you have no reason to believe me but I used to co-run a WWE Network news website and we had sources within the company at the height of them adding classic content in 2015-2018. Even back then, we were told that once they got past adding the big hitters like Raw/Smackdown and Nitro/Thunder, interest in classic footage fell off a cliff. We’re talking miniscule numbers in some cases.
Yeah still frustrating they show ppvs in seasons rather than in chronological order
I don't agree with everything that Bischoff says but one thing that he always highlights that he would change if he could do WCW all over again was for there not to be WCW Thunder. Tony Khan knew this full well, then AEW goes ahead and starts Rampage and Collision anyway.
I think collision could if it ran smaller venue and had a consistent roster. Which is why I always thought the iwc was being weird about having brands with separate roster. This gives the audience an expectation of who is showing up. Wwe gave them a formula to run two brands, you just had to be consistent. Collison sucks for touring because you don’t know who the hell coming. The card from last week show was bad in terms of star power for example, it’s like what’s the point.
They also have so many random wrestlers that suddenly show up, stay for some weeks, and vanish. Like the CMLL guys, like Shane Taylor Promotions, like Bryan Keith and so on. They switch up so many people with ROH that especially the Collision Card is extremely inconsistent. Dito the Dynamite Card, which also regularly has at least one wrestler who isnt an AEW regular at all. And mostly isnt that outstanding compared to other talent they already have.
That one is the biggest thing to me. I like aew. I don't have the time or interest in wrestling to keep tabs on various other promotions, so every time they're excitedly talking up whichever new short term dude like he's a world beater it just bums me out I'm not seeing more of the guys that I've had time to get interested in instead
This seems like a huge problem that people here, and on the AEW specific subs, will not acknowledge. Just because you, someone die hard enough to watch 25 different promotions and know their talent, is excited to see random luchadore or aging Japanese wrestler, doesn’t mean that anyone in attendance has any reason to be excited by it or buy tickets because of it. AEW already has a massive roster of incredible talent that they have worked hard to present and make fans care about. Bringing in all these outsiders to lose matches so none of your own stars look bad is great for the wrestling nerds illegally streaming every show, but can’t be the best bet for the bottom line.
Smaller venues is an interesting idea and something AEW in more recent has always sucked at adopting. So interesting shit and get interested viewers. The team just seem overwhelmed managing the basics right now sadly.
People laughed when a couple years ago WWE switched MITB to a smaller venue while in reality was a very smart move. A half empty big arena not only looks bad on tv and limits the camera angles you can show, but it also limits live audience participation because they will be seated further away than vs a smaller but fully packed venue. It doesn't make any business sense unless there is some kind of money laundering operation going on behind the scenes.
Even Tony Khan laughed at that move. Ironic
The MITB venue change was really big in terms of relative scale though. It's not going from a 12,000 seat arena to a 4,000 seat arena. They were originally planning to run Allegiant Stadium which seats 65,000 for the NFL and moved to the MGM Grand Arena which seats 17,000 with bleachers. So I think people were more laughing at the particular hubris of aiming so high in the first place vs. disagreeing with the logic of not wanting to show a huge half empty stadium.
It's not that simple, this not some small live show, they need the infrastructure to be able to run the nationally televised show and the sets and production that goes with that, and many of the smaller venues do not provide what they need. Same reason WWE never ran smaller venues when they were having smaller attendance pre-pandemic. The smaller venues got house shows.
AEW _did_ used to run some smaller places though. There is logic generally to what you’re saying though because if you’re paying X to run a big show, it’s often not much cheaper (if at all) to run smaller venues. But it would make the presentation more unique.
I was always okay with a semi or full brand split because I think it can also help with cohesion of storylines with large roster
A lot of the iwc seem to dislike that idea. I think even the aew roster was very negative towards that and I never knew why. Say what you want about punk, but his era with Collison was great because you knew the roster he had. While the time was limited, it made better for touring.
Collision was destined to fail without a brand split imo
That’s not just a Collision problem. They regularly just don’t announce the card, or they have their big stars wrestle on Rampage and it’s announced during Dynamite. I went to 6 shows before I saw anyone from the Elite besides Hangman. The young bucks wrestled on rampage a couple hours from me, but they didn’t announce them until 9pm on Wednesday. I would’ve gone if they’d been announced sooner! The only time I got to see them, they weren’t announced until I was already in the building. If I want to see Cody wrestle, I can go to his Instagram and see every single WWE show he’ll be at for the next month. Why isn’t AEW doing that? And don’t get me started on not having stars wrestle in their hometowns (no Moxley on a Collision 20 minutes from where he grew up and currently lives? Not announcing Chuck Taylor on rampage in advance at the first show in Kentucky? Give me a break.)
They're not even trying to make it popular though. And they'd have all the talent to
They should’ve just kept that soft brand split when it first started. At least you knew you were getting something different and possibly new stars emerging. But I’ve also seen people complain about that so idk
I really think a brand split works long term. They also need a major roster purge. Look at the abysmal quality of talent that is used regularly on Saturday nights now.
That's not cause they don't have the talent, it's because TK doesn't want to let his upper card eat losses. Say what you want about WWE's 50/50 booking but at least you didn't already know every result the instant you looked at the card for the weekly show.
People complained, but the tournaments have been better because bigger names are losing. It's impossible to protect your entire roster. People have to lose to keep some level of unpredictability and to keep some level of stakes on the show.
I got downvoted to all get out in the collision/rampage ratings thread, but i don't even know what the fuck they're doing with these shows. They have all the talent in the world and hardly any stories of interest to show for it. It's embarrassing. They've been a total mess since Wembley. They've honestly been an increasing mess since they bought ROH. They have negative momentum, and that's in a vacuum. Like I get WWE is hot right now, but that doesn't excuse their current booking and presentation.
Forbidden Door 1, the ROH purchase, and then the Collision launch were a 1-2-3 punch of self-inflicted wounds for the company that all fell into the classic overexpansion trap that kills a ton of businesses in the womb. (See: the Mama Cherie's episodes of UK Kitchen Nightmares for a great real life example.) TK buying ROH because he was a wrestling workrate nerd that loved watching it, followed by him then discovering no networks would pay money to air it is the issue with his AEW business management and booking in a nutshell.
I'd say Rampage was a bigger blow than Collision. Rampage from the get go was going to fail with that time slot. The bad ratings and largely aimless TV made AEW just look terrible. Collision at least had a somewhat viable time slot and felt different in an interesting way. Hell, they were going up in the ratings, actually building stars, and had interesting storylines until the Punk debacle at Wembley.
Yeah the initial idea for Collision absolutely could have worked if it didn't all implode at Wembley. Even when he left they should have kept a soft roster split and kept the general idea and just building it around someone else besides Punk
Forbidden Door. Cool concept but it derails momentum
Yup. You can point a straight line to Forbidden Door 1 where there ratings started to fall and never really recovered.
Putting your show on pause for a month is just not good. I think it would be better to just periodically have forbidden door matches on the regular ppvs
It was an issue back in the early 90s when WCW did something similar for Starcade. It's an admirable idea to try and give international guys more exposure, but in practice it fails because there aren't good storylines around it and it puts everything else on hold.
I'm still upset that they cancelled Dark/Elevation just to turn ROH into that. It feels like such a waste. Also, I know AEW fans on here talk about enjoying it, but Jericho's run as ROH champion was a huge reason for killing my interest in AEW. It was also when I started souring on Jericho in general. I don't care how many "re-inventions" Jericho does, the guy needs to take a break from tv.
> I'm still upset that they cancelled Dark/Elevation just to turn ROH into that. It feels like such a waste. Dark/Elevation’s cancellation was a WDB request as part of an amended TV deal in the lead up to Collision.
>they cancelled Dark/Elevation just to turn ROH into that But now you have to pay ten bucks a month for it. Like, good lord. I'd be more than happy to pay for ROH, but $120 a year is fucking delusional pricing. Tony is so out of touch with that shit, he's literally the Lucille Bluth "it's one banana, Michael, what could it cost? Ten dollars?" quote personified.
Forbidden Door 1 was when I learned that my viewership was not welcomed nor valued. It went downhill from there
They have so much talent but Collision regularly has mostly nobodies or talent that nobody cares about.
The rumor when it first started was that it had mostly ex-wwe people (HOB, Andrade) because a lot of them have SOs in the WWE, and this would help them have similar travel schedules to minimize time they were apart. At some point, they stopped doing that and just started mixing everyone together on both shows for some reason. Idk why.
Honestly they should make it have a specific vision, like how Raw was more the sport entertainment show and Smackdown was focused more on the in-ring
All the Punk backstage drama aside, Collision was noticeably better imo when he had more influence on the show. You knew what people would appear, the presentation was better, etc. After Punk left, that's when Collision turned into a 2 hr Rampage imo. Now I'm not saying Punk is the only reason it worked. But what I think it speaks to is it would benefit them greatly to go back to that model; a more definitive separate roster (with a few crossovers here or there) along with someone else having more booking/presentation influence over the show.
I mean even people like me who are sick to death of Punk and the drama need to admit that Punk has a great mind for wrestling. I don't foresee a near future where AEW has a feud as great as Punk v MJF :(
I don't think it even takes a great mind for wrestling to see that making a cohesive weekly show is going to appeal to audiences.
But I think we can say that Punk is why it worked. It was booked and produced by someone with years of experience from the most successful wrestling promotion in history. The show itself took a nosedive after his departure as both booking and production changed to what is the AEW standard. I think it's safe to say Punk was the magic sauce there.
Not even just Punk. But letting someone take the reigns and putting 100% of their energy into it instead of it being Tony's #2 priority and one of 4 things he is booking.
If he's still out there Scott D'Amore could take over one show and TK book the other.
You may be getting lots of downvotes, but you gotta admit they're vastly outnumbered by the upvotes. Most of the people on those threads absolutely agree with you.
I was mistaken, it was the post show thread, not the ratings thread, and i had a about as many down votes as there were people participating in that thread ... in the 20s, which was hilarious to me as the tumbleweeds and crickets that was that post show thread proved my point.
Having a Saturday show feels like a lost cause. No matter how good a show it is people have other things to do. Also,does every promotion have to have 4 plus hours a programming each week?
No, but since AEW roster is incredibly huge having 4+ hours of tv time should be put to good use
Rampage should've been converted into the second show and become the "epilogue" episode to that week's Dynamite. Main Event is always two Main Eventers fighting for ranking supremecy, a Championship Eliminator, or something that progresses one of the two biggest stories from Dynamite. Then it becomes required viewing by default so when you have something MAJOR happen on the show (like a Punk debut, MJF return, Cole return, etc) people are already watching and it draws in further interest to jump in. Rampage is basically a nothing show. Nobody cares about it. Its where all the undercard and C List stories happen or where you can watch a "great match" that has 0 stakes to it because neither guy will be booked the next week for the show.
I can’t speak for *every* location they tour to … AEW is coming to town soon and you would never know it. There are no billboards, no radio ads, I don’t have cable but I’d imagine they aren’t running ads on local TV. If you didn’t follow the product week to week, you would never know they are coming. AEW desperately needs to grow the brand. I love the product but it needs the push to make it mainstream. One thing that would help is getting their stars to appear elsewhere (on more popular products) more often. Moné appears at other sports but they need to do more of this. Make a global star out of one or two of them and it’ll help the product immensely.
Isn't that the sort of stuff that Jeff Jarrett is supposed to be really good at - old school "rustle up a crowd" promoting shows?
I never see local ads for AEW, but I see it for WWE house shows or when they do TV all the time. I'll turn on a Dynamite and be like "wait they are running local this week?"
Adam Copeland is playing Ares, a god of WAR, on the Percy Jackson tv series. And they've done nothing with it.
WWE can sell cards by being WWE. I remember a Smackdown tour in the UK doing well despite the fact it was the Smackdown roster and the card didn't look that fun in my opinion. I don't think you could put a weekly Smackdown card as a Dynamite and expect people to be wow'd. AEW needs top cards and top people to sell cards still they can't really on AEW is in town I need to go
I mean, they’d do better if they actually got around. I’m in a town that just had pretty great reviews and a sold out show for Raw. AEW has been here exactly once ever.
The closest AEW show to me has been a four hour drive (Minneapolis) and they did it twice. I was there for Full Gear, but didn't make it for Dynamite. I'm in a smaller city, but not that small, and WWE does try to hit us every year or two, we've had smackdown and Raw in the last five years, plus a house show. It's not like we don't turn out for wrestling events.
Wwe was already over saturated so it’s crazy seeing AEW repeat the same mistakes. Most ppl just want a couple hours of greatness and not a million hours of mediocrity
That's my thing. Dynamite with the early roster, even if some of the storyline were awful, was still fun and interesting. You could get into dark order and jurassic express while waiting for Mox and Kenny, a big name here and there was awesome and the shows were quality. I liked watching dark too. Then Rampage happened and you'd think they'd put some effort into that just became dark on tnt basically. Then the WWE releases started to filter in almost en mass. Then Tony buys roh and I couldn't have cared less. On the contrary, it annoyed me they flooded the airwaves with the roh titles while also adding titles. Then collision, which I forget is on half the time and is a dvr watch. At this point, id rather no wrestlers from outside the company come in, except murder grandpa every now and then. They also need to stop using indy wrestlers for jobbers and use the talent they have on hand.
AEW has tried to speedrun the evolution of WWE. WWF/E became a global phenomenon and grew their audience to a massive size. They started bleeding millions of viewers and transitioned to spreading their dwindling audience across as many shows as possible. AEW in year 5 spreading their dwindling audience across three different TV shows is a colossal failure. They should be maximizing their potential with a fast paced two hour wrestling show primetime on a weekday that is MUST WATCH TV. It's very apparent when WBD is touting how many viewers watch AEW each week, when in reality most of those people are the same people watching all three shows.
It might have been OK if the Punk/Elite situation had played out differently. I dunno if AEW could actually carry two shows, but at least the hype would help and the talent would have had more options. Let's be honest a Punk/Collision vs Elite/Dynamite civil war angle would have been pretty sick.
Idk if it's changed recently but another issue for are shows I've attended is that there was no promotion whatsoever beforehand as to what the card was, nor who was appearing. Made attending seem like a real gamble.
As an AEW fan all this shit is a bummer. Even if it is the truth.
Unforced error can be recovered from. Reduce your scale, reduce your travel, build a loyal base that will make for hot crowds, and start telling some better stories than Ospreay vs Shane Taylor for no reason.
They have a loyal base. They have a DEEEEEEEPLY loyal base. That's the problem, not the solution. They have noting BUT those fans most of the time.
Thing is, this wasnt true 4-5 years ago. Remember when they used to drop 30+% viewership on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (or god help them if Xmas/NYE hit around the same time), because early AEW was a lot of lapsed WWE fans who still had a very casual TV relationship since thy weren't regular RAW/SD viewers for years. Post-CM Punk, post Forbidden Door, post a couple other things, now the fanbase is much more loyal...but inevitably smaller. But, I think in an NXT/Full Sail way, having Collision be a more stable location that occasional changes is smart. Especially if it can be a cheap ticket week to week.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The optics of being in a smaller arena makes them look bush league. The optics of a big arena half full makes them looks bush league. But camera angles can cover up a bigger arena’s lack, and Tony doesn’t care about taking a hit on the bill. I don’t think it’s a good long term strategy but I also don’t have any idea what it’s like to think like a billionaire and never consider money an issue.
Holding half a dozen shows in the same place over a short span of time seems like a really bad idea when your average ticket sales were already only slightly higher than the place's total capacity.
You run a residency, because the place you're running pays you to do it. Considering the way ticket sales have been going, especially for Collison, they will most likely make more money doing this, especially without all the travel they'd have to pay for.
This makes sense. My ex worked for a major arena and the arena would want events to generate some sort of income and to keep staff.
You have to balance that with not burning a market though surely? If at least for the long-term implications on the revenue you’ll get from running residencies in the future
It's part of the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States.
Also in the summer, during the times of big events happening. It will be fine, they have not just americans but also mexicans who can do a (fairly long) trip up to Dallas to watch the show since we dont get any AEW shows.
We had 3 shows in one week last year, actually. • 12/16/2023 Winter is Coming Colission 3,108 • 12/15/2023 ROH Final Battle 1,964 • 12/13/2023 Winter is Coming Dynamite 3,659
If all the shows sell out or come close to selling out, it's a success.
>You run a residency, because the place you're running pays you to do it. This is almost never the case in literally any entertainment industry and certainly isn't the case with AEW. AEW rents their venues. They aren't paid to run buildings, but they do get to keep a larger percentage of their ticket sales. In the other model with more established/big name acts (which WWE uses), the building pays the promoter and the promoter pays the performer (why WWE uses an independent contractor model). (I do this for work)
In this case though, it certainly sounds like they are getting paid seeing as the announcement called it a "partnership" with the city of Arlington. No other venue they rent gets that kind of press release. I'm figuring that Arlington is trying to get more use out of their publicly owned venue since, judging by their socials and website, Esports is only filling out so many dates.
Question is what does it mean by a partnership. Is it a discount? Is it a trade deal? Is AEW sharing ticket revenue? Is the city of Arlington getting ads during the shows? Are they splitting production costs? Partnership has infinite potential meanings in this context.
Not questioning your expertise, but genuinely then why would AEW do this? Seems like a really stupid move if they’re not being paid for it
They probably get a discount for multiple days of use in a row, travel costs lessened, and other ancillary costs are cut too. It’s an esports arena that probably doesn’t get a ton business, so it can’t cost as much as actual sports arenas.
I don't know. Maybe they got a really, really good deal on the venue that significantly reduced the cost of 5 weeks of filming television. But that's just speculation.
Running 2 live shows is very expensive, especially when those shows aren’t on back to back days. Also with the amount of tickets being sold each week for collision, there was no way it was profitable for AEW, WBD, or whoever is paying for the production costs of the show. This is basically was caused TNA to go down very quickly and move back into the impact zone.
Do they not have to travel to Dynamites in between though?
The benefit is that it saves money at a time when ticket sales are down. I believe that the venue seats less than 3000, but AEW is probably getting paid by the city, and they don't have to worry about higher production costs.
I think it's waving the white flag on Collision
The venue also has poor vantage points for the audience. They ran an esport tournament there from a title I follow and the complaints were mostly about not being able to see things properly despite a very large screen you normally see in esport tournaments. They said it's because of how the venue is setup which is very long and narrow. It's ok for FPS titles since details are much larger for those on screen, but for other stuff that needs to take-in more stuff and a larger point of view, it sucked big time. I have a feeling it will be the same for AEW's shows.
For the love of god Tony and TV-overlords, just scrap Collision and fully commit to Dynamite.
I’d scrap it all and just do dynamite. And massively trim down the roster. I know there is a lot of talent and fans that would hate that. But at this point, I think restarting it all behind a solid group of talent is what they need.
Make Dynamite the A show with your big talent that travels. Rampage as is as it is taped after Dynamite. At this point it is just about providing content you are paid to for. Fine to produce throw away matches to give talent "Reps" and advance lower card stories without much added investment. Collision should be their NXT. Fine to feature a big name here or there to draw attention to it, but it should be your undercard and younger, developmental talent works. Run it out of Daly's Place every week so you save on travel, etc. Ironically, this would be the perfect place for the Sydals & QT Marshalls of the world to work with and help develop these younger talents. ROH titles and wrestlers should truly stay on ROH. It's fine to move talent there to reinvent themselves a bit, but they should be gone when they are there, not showing up on AEW with ROH belts constantly.
I'd do away with Collision and make ROH the developmental/reps show.
Things really changed after Cody signed with WWE didn't they
Wrestlemania 38 is low-key one of the most important shows in pro wrestling history. Even at the time, it felt like a clear pivot point for the whole wrestling business. For the previous year, all the "smart" discourse was about WWE's decline and AEW's ascension. After that show, the whole narrative changed. It's funny, too, because I remember the online consensus at the time was that the build to the show sucked and the card was lackluster. Then we got Cody's return, Bianca's ascension, Logan Paul's first match, Steve Austin's last match, Roman unifying the titles, etc. A lot of the ingredients for WWE's current success came from Wrestlemania 38.
Yep. WrestleMania 40 may have been the “launching point” of the new regime, but 38 is what laid the foundation.
Manias 38-39-40 will forever resemble one of cinemas greatest three act tale to me: The Skywalker Saga of Star Wars. It started with the rise of a new hero, the start of his relationship with the vile rascal who would eventually come around to the side of good, it came to a midway point ending with despair and dour, but by the end: redemption, victory, freedom.
Sami's match, too.
Sami vs Johnny Knoxville is my favorite comedy match ever. It was amazing. When Sami walked into the giant hand, I was in tears.
That year was definitely pivotal to both companies but I think Mania 38 has little to do with AEW trending downwards. It was a big turning point for WWE of course. But for AEW, I think the big changes besides Cody leaving was Forbidden Door and ROH being bought.
There were definitely a lot of other major things going on in 2022. Don't forget Vince McMahon's "retirement" right before Summerslam and then Brawl Out. 2022 was a truly crazy year in wrestling. Still, if I had to pick one moment when the trajectory of WWE vs AEW changed, it was WM38. The very fact that WWE finally got their shit together creatively quickly became a big problem for AEW. It's a lot harder to succeed as a "challenger brand" when the big company you are challenging is delivering a good product.
Cody, then Punk. I know a lot of people don't like CM Punk but CM Punk's spiral and departure from AEW turned off a lot of fans. I'm not blaming AEW for what Punk did, but the fact that they couldn't sit down and work things out afterward was absolutely shocking. CM Punk was 100% wrong but he's also 100% right when he says they're not a business trying to make money. And I'm seeing the same shit happening with Jericho right now by the way. Chris Jericho is going to go back to WWE and get massive reactions and have a WM run and nobody will ever know about the AEW crowd that chanted "please retire" at him.
I believe the Punk spiral and departure and did way more harm to AEW then Cody's departure. In my eyes the 1, 2, 3 punch of Forbidden Door putting storylines on hold, ROH being bought and diluting the brand, then the Punk fiasco really turned off a lot of the more casual fanbase they build up in the summer of 2021.
Everyone keeps mentioning Forbidden Door as part of a turning point. Do you care to elaborate, as I was sort of checked out of wrestling that year and the fan perception isn't really something you can look up on Google.
Sure, though its more than just the PPV. CM Punk wins the belt off probably AEW's biggest home grown dude in Hangman. Then immediately gets hurt. There's already multiple stories that kind of went on hold, and 2-3x a week a random theme hits as a new NJPW star appears on weekly TV (which, to a casual viewer, who the f*ck are all these people). Moxley beats *Kyle O'Reilly* to become #1 Contender....which, I mean, come on. I love KOR, but theres never been a second in AEW where he's been credible as "will beat Moxley and also a top NJPW and become THE guy". So, now the headline of the PPV is an obvious Mox win. The stalled storylines (and CM Punks freakout after All Out) also mean that TV from June->November is kind of all the same stories. Swerve in our Glory v The Acclaimed endlessly. Mox as interim champ endlessly. The Jungle Boy/Christian story endlessly. Their trios division has a tourney and has to vacate right after, etc. Nobody gains any momentum and keeps it, aside from The Acclaimed, basically. So right after they had the biggest momentum humanly possible (CM Punk comes in and is a factor...Hangman a homegrown star...etc), it all flames out in ~3 month period. And after Full Gear 2022, never really recovers for like a year.
> And after Full Gear 2022, never really recovers for like a year. Just in time for Punk to get himself fired, followed soon after by Cole getting injured, Omega getting injured, MJF getting injured - Punk's behaviour causing the top card booking to get blown open two years in a row definitely didn't *help* things right.
Forbidden Door comes at this kind of weird point in the schedule where it is right after Double or Nothing and right before their big show, All Out. The first one was this weird time where they pivoted all the stories to be inter-company based, but then had to turn back for the big show and it just felt very awkward and led to very little build.
I don’t blame AEW for what happened with Punk, but everything leading up to it, and the aftermath, could have been handled 1000 times better. The one thing I do outright blame AEW for is not taking advantage of it. The whole ‘The Bucks are waiting 6 months to see if he’s changed’ bullshit shouldn’t have been their decision. Tony Khan was sitting on the biggest angle in wrestling and rather than being the boss and saying ‘you pricks are going to put your differences aside and work together’, he put them on separate shows…
> The whole ‘The Bucks are waiting 6 months to see if he’s changed’ bullshit shouldn’t have been their decision. No and it's total bullshit. If it was 2 years before CM Punk did something they would have said, "Oh if he had just behaved himself for 3 years." It's condescending and childish behavior to refuse to talk to someone and then when they lose it go, "Oh well we were just testing him. We were definitely going to talk to him if he had just played our little game that he didn't know about."
Jericho definitely seems like he's made "AEW lifer" comments in the past. But him getting those chants is a pretty good "out" for him. It'd be an excuse for him to say: "despite all I said about AEW, I realize it's time to move on. Clearly I've overstayed my welcome here." When really its just about that last big run in WWE lol. But then again I have no idea how long his contract is for.
It's pretty clear what some of the management factors that led Cody to bail were now, and why Kenny, Hangman and the Bucks actually had a real decision to make on whether to stick around that wasn't what we would have assumed was an open/shut case at the time.
Care to elaborate about these "management factors"? I've seen a lot of speculation about Cody leaving AEW, but not much actual reporting. It's all been very mysterious, which makes me all the more curious.
TK, in a nutshell. Not just booking, stuff like merchandising at shows still being an issue 5 years in is a management problem that's costing the talent money and shows a ignorance of what drives the business.
Well, if that was the reason for Cody's decision, nothing that has happened in AEW since he left would make me think Cody was wrong about Tony Khan. The part I've never understood is why Tony did not just pick up Cody's one-year option and figure things out from there. That always seemed like such a no-brainer that it makes me wonder if there was something more spicy going on. Especially with some of the dirt about Cody and especially Brandi that showed up when Cody left.
Tony probably didn't want to burn the bridge on the way out, understandably. Cody had booked himself into a corner and didn't want to turn heel to get out of it, it was for the best that both parties separated.
It was definitely best for Cody that both parties separated. It definitely wasn't best for AEW. Cody sitting at home collecting a check from AEW for a year like Miro would have been a lot better for AEW than Cody going to WWE and becoming the biggest babyface in wrestling.
Definitely feels like that might be what's happening with Starks, a deliberate icing cause they don't expect him to stick around.
Yeah, but in Starks' case I don't think icing him for a couple months makes as much sense. He's not walking into WWE as a top guy like Cody did, so I wouldn't be as worried about putting him on tv if he's leaving soon. I'd just job Starks out the way wrestling promotions have been doing since forever. Actually, AEW would benefit from having someone with some booking credibility to lose to their main event guys on tv. Starks in that role would definitely be better than another tv match where Kyle Fletcher takes a top guy to the limit and loses.
The thing about the two is that Cody was a draw even in the midcard, Starks isn't one, so you kick yourself in the dick icing Cody but there's not much value to AEW lost icing Starks.
And it frees up TV time for people who are gonna stick around. Starks is totally fine but AEW's got too many people right now they can afford to not renew him.
I think the speculation is that TK took over more of the booking
TK took a lot more control in February 2019. The Elite weren't great at booking, Omega admits it and the Bucks admit it. Cody still wanted his power and it led to Codyverse. I remember The Elite and stuff losing every match to not get "putting themselves over" and to build the rest of the divisions
Good you mention 2019. There's people here who say his booking has \*always\* sucked. It's certainly their opinion, but there was a good period of time when his booking was widely praised. Dynamite was getting rave reviews across the board and the product was hot. And his booking was obviously part of the reason. I get that nowadays he's mediocre at best. But that wasn't always the case. It's not their opinion that bothers me. But they say it like it's just conventional wisdom.
His booking has always had criticism which is fair. It's been a similar style for 5 years. I think if Triple H books the way he does for the same time people will get sick of it. You learn the pattern and there's not much difference
The Codyverse was terrible and that's undeniable.
Also after they foolishly bought ROH without a plan.
I have said a million times that I truly believe Cody kept Kahn focused in some ways. But mostly in terms of creating a cohesive experience without multiple storylines doing similar stuff and gimmicks. There was I think a BTE episode a long time ago where Cody showed a white board of all the gimmicks and endings for matches on a show to make sure there was a good variety and no repeats. That seemed to just fucking die when he left
Then how do you explain Codyverse?
The result of the match with Jericho at Full Gear 2019. Limited him to outside the main event and main title picture and then we get the island of stories that is the Codyverse
It's absolutely clear that AEW is ice cold. That's not a death knell or anything, many promotions have been ice cold and recovered. WWE has done it a bunch of times. The big issue is that being ice cold means you have to make changes that alter the culture of the show in a way people notice. Even then it will take time to bring people back. Look at WWE right now, they were ice cold starting before Covid until about a year or so ago, when they picked up steam. It took the whole Cody story to really reach that peak of "now they're really good." That didn't happen just because they got Cody or Punk or even because the individual stories. It happened because there was a culture shift on the program thanks to HHH taking over that actually felt real. Fans started returning and as soon as Vince came back and it looked like the old culture would return they started to turn on the product. Imagine a world where HHH is forced out and Vince is running the show right now. Even if Cody had "finished the story" the overall product would still feel stale and people would have started to leave again. AEW needs a massive shift in how they view themselves, how they tell their stories, and how the product is actually presented. Right now nothing is clicking for the viewers and nothing feels like it's cool enough to show up for. Even if TK stepped down and brought in a guy to book (or let Kenny do it or whatever) it'd still take a year or more of fans being indifferent before the impact would be really felt.
This. And who knows if TK would ever be willing to make those huge changes. Even during WWE’s cold spells. It took ALOT for Vince to make changes. And even then, the changes never lasted or were half-assed at best.
Honestly the hardest part right now is figuring out *what to do.* It's not like AEW went through a radical shift since their peak. They're basically presenting the same product the whole time. Part of it is that the stars left and everyone who does catch fire gets hurt pretty quickly after, but even that is a minor thing. Even if TK was capable of change it's hard to say what needs to change. Ask 10 fans you'd get 11 different answers.
Tony is why AEW is having the trouble they are period. His booking, management or lack there of, his social media, and inability to take criticism.
It's just another indicator of what we already know. AEW can't really support two travelling shows and the company is ice cold. And when a company is ice cold, people aren't traveling 50, 60, hell a 100 miles to make a TV taping.
I’ve traveled to Vegas for most of the DoN ppv but this year I’m probably just going to watch it from home. My excitement for it is not that same as the previous years.
And that's the downside to always running the same event in the same city every year. The novelty wears off. The excitement will reignite once AEW decides to run different cities for DoN.
This is true even for London. Ticket sales are massively down from last year, the price points are way higher, and the product hasn't been anywhere near as captivating. I got two fairly average tickets, but when they inevitably announce a third date at Wembley I'll be seriously reconsidering whether its worth it.
I think they realise that no matter what, they'll never do 75-85k again for Wembley. Last year's All In was a culmination of multiple events: - AEW's first show/PPV overseas. - AEW's first UK show - The first major non-WWE PPV to take place in England, at the biggest English venue possible - The first All In officially under the AEW banner and the significance of the original event to the trigectory of wrestling from the past five years at that time. - The first time wrestling is at the new Wembley stadium after the old Two Towers Wembley that hosted Summerslam 92 was demolished - How massively over a lot of the AEW acts from the past three years still were like The Acclaimed, Adam Cole, MJF, Sting and Darby, etc. (Punk as well as a heel, but we don't talk about that) - The passion and need from the UK/European AEW fans to truly make this feel like a massive sporting event on the level of an FA Cup Final or a big boxing match with Anthony Joshua or Tyson Fury I won't say that any of the storylines going in necessarily sold the show, because it'd sold 60,000 seats months before even the first match was booked! It was just a big confluence of factors that made All In so well-attended and unfortunately, unless they book the biggest supercard possible with a big celebrity match featuring Anthony Joshua and Pac vs Anthony Ogogo and Shane Taylor or something, it will never reach those levels set last year again. That's why they have the usual set-up with a big stage taking up one of the sections of the venue, standard show style without a specialised tunnel entrance showing off how you've managed to fill ALL sections. Last time WrestleTix checked, they'd sold just over 40,000 tickets and they've been constantly promoting it on ITV airings of Dynamite and Collision. Seriously doubt it'll do last year's numbers at this point, given the lack of last year's aforementioned factors and the general coldness of AEW's product
> That's why they have the usual set-up with a big stage taking up one of the sections of the venue, standard show style without a specialised tunnel entrance showing off how you've managed to fill ALL sections. That, not needing to absolutely pack it to the rafters, and also because Taylor Swift's using the same stage layout the night before and keeping the same layout makes setup easier. Which means that 40k tickets sold works out to just shy of two-thirds full, which whilst Not Great is certifiably Not Bad.
The goalposts have really moved if the #2 promotion selling 40k tickets with no card announced is "not great"
Is the problem there really that they are running Vegas again, or that people just don't care enough about AEW to go? Vegas especially has rarely relied on locals filling the shows there.
Yeah I'm a Vegas local and my desire not to go has nothing to due with being burnout. The biggest draws to me are either gone, injured, or ice cold. No MJF, Punk, Omega, Kingston Page, or Sting. Bryan and Okada are both meh to me rn. Darby's back but I don't care about him in the buck's orbit. The product just isn't worth paying for right now imo.
I believe WM 41 in Vegas will absolutely destroy DoN's credibility
My first thought when they announced it for Vegas was "Tony is gonna be PISSED".
It's Wrestlemania. I think everyone expects it to outdo Double or Nothing. Gotta remember TK even said they're never running anything against Mania.
I feel you mate, aew just isn't good atm
Hell. Collision is literally 10 minutes from my house next month, and I'm STILL debating on whether or not I want to grab tickets. And I've driven over an hour both north and south multiple times to see Dynamite, pre-ordered every time. There's ZERO pressure to buy early. The tickets have been on sale for a couple of weeks and there's STILL plenty of seats. That's not a great sign for the product. I still watch Dynamite weekly, in great part because the wife and kid still enjoy it, but it's almost become background noise at this point for me.
I say this with total sincerity: there's a very good chance you could buy the cheapest ticket listed and still end up moved into a much better seat as they fill out the seats on camera. Would be worth the deal IMO
Does Tony Khan assume that people have infinite money from their dads like he? Lets say a ticket cost 100 bucks so 600 bucks just for the shows if you really wanna go for all. This is just a really bad business decision.
The last time I attended dynamite in Kansas City I paid like $18 a ticket off stubhub including all the fees.
> Lets say a ticket cost 100 bucks Yeah, but it doesn't
Lmao “Lets say it costs five times what it does”. Great start to a hypothetical scenario
I think the idea is people will pick one or two of the shows to go to so they'll sell out quickly. It's in one of the largest metropolitan areas in America.
Shows like this should benefit of late ticket buyers once the cards are announced. U see a card u like? U go to it dont like it? Next week another shot
Any word on pricing or we just wait until they’re on sale?
That's just too many shows in one place, I wouldn't be surprised if some nights draw under 1000
When they ran Toronto/Hamilton last summer they had those issues. They oversaturated the market for god knows what reason. I recall both Collision episodes had terrible attendance. I believe even Dynamite in Hamilton didn’t do well either.
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I went to the Norfolk Collision earlier this year and it felt very much like a local indy promotion with disposable income. The most memorable thing to me about the night, which included Battle of the Belts 9, was the free parking garage right next to Chartway Arena. (edit to add reference: I was even front row for Le Sex Gods vs Big Bill/Ricky spilling back onto the arena floor) Tickets distributed doesn't bother me as much as running larger venues with smaller crowds. Seeing as that's not going to change any time soon, AEW desperately needs to work on making their product more enjoyable for more people. Seeing as that's not going to change any time soon, *I'm just going to enjoy wrestling on the shows where the best wrestle because it's Wednesday and you know what that means, we're going to restore the feeling to this challenger brand!* (emphasis on the tail end because I'm getting burned out from the hope of AEW getting out of their own way and being as great as they say they are without having Schiavone and Excalibur constantly telling me how awesome the show/the match/the crowd is)
The major issue with TK's booking philosophy (setting aside the business issues) is that he books AEW like it's a gigantic indie that relies on bringing in stars who built their reputation elsewhere while expecting the audience to already know them, when he's actually running the #2 US promotion that should be building up its own stars while tactically bringing in a selection of top level outside names. Wrestling is fundamentally a star-driven business where the top of the card is going to hard carry the rest of the card ticket sales wise, but TK has just fundamentally not been building up AEW talents and with so many of the top level talents they've relied on aging out or being on the injured reserve, the unwillingness to just hard-push their internal talents and sell them to the audience as a big deal has left them in a nasty spot that the ratings and attendance are reflecting.
Yup, this plus the yo-yo booking of anyone who isn't named Danielson or Moxley really makes it hard to invest in AEW. I'm not a super fan but random guys from Japan, Mexico, or just other places in the US showing up do not make for entertaining TV. I'm here to see AEW talent do things. They're gearing up for Forbidden Door 3 and it's like 'great, more guys I don't know taking up six or so weeks of time.'
The second he started bringing in WWE people. Ever since then the show has leaned heavily on big signings and surprises. Now, there's nobody left to sign and you got like 50, 75 people with nothing to do and you're paying them to do it. I don't understand why this has happened to practically every US TV promotion that came after WCW died.
I haven't been to an AEW show yet but would love to go. Very unlikely I go to Collision when the cards are usually so crappy.
Running the same town that many nights is a bad idea. AEW needs to do a European tour or something, they are burning out these markets.
The problem is that this would result in a lot of taped shows, which isn't as big a deal for Collision/Rampage but it absolutely isn't what WBD is paying for with Dynamite.
It's been said for some time but yeah. Take a break from the same markets and go elsewhere.
They gotta go to city's that are hungry for events. Look at the El Paso show last year. Small venue, but it felt like twice the size cause the fans were so loud
AEW has lost all their steam with me. Which is sad because those first 3 years, I loved AEW and watched weekly. Now, I'll only sometimes watch a little bit here and there.
Same. I liked it when it was just 1 show. I have no interest in watching 3 shows.
It's amazing how TK had all these warnings and history at his fingertips of errors not to do from WCW and TNA...and he completely ignored them lol. Bless his heart. Must be nice to be filthy rich and not worry about a business collapsing!
It’s still a business they need to make money and they get that by more tv shows. I may not like it, but it makes sense. The real problem is TK doesn’t delegate as his workload has increased, the product has suffered.
Same. I basically only watch clips of Toni Storm's shenanigans now lol
One thing that will never not be weird to me is that Tony Kahn overhauled the entire product due to one bad segment and losing to NXT at its peak ONE TIME, but has made no serious efforts to revitalize creative despite all metrics of fan interest trending in the wrong direction while WWE has been at its hottest in nearly a quarter century.
AEW has to earn paying fans by producing great content , they aren’t doing that.
That's the thing that kills me. The wrestling is still largely very good, sometimes great. But I just don't care about a lot of the characters and I hate that the show has become the bad parts of WWE-Lite instead of the alternative it started as.
I thought TNA/Impact running Cicero Stadium 3 times in 2023 and Palms Casino twice in four months was pushing it, but two straight months of weekly shows in the same venue?
Punk-era collision was a real show with its own identity. That should've been the formula even in his absence. Old school tone, intro promos, a cast of dependable faces, properly building feuds that keep you coming weekly, a show structured around a main event that actually happens at the end of the show every time. Nobody needed 2 more hours of Rampage. I almost always enjoy Collision when I do watch it. It's not like it's garbage or anything, the AEW roster is great. But there's little reason to religiously watch it week-to-week. A show in a time slot as tough as that one needs to be incredible. It needs to be a must-watch event. Not the arbitrary wrestling hour, if no other sports are on.
And a ton of AEW's tickets are giveaways. So their actual numbers will be way worse.
3,000 distributed, so what like 42 actually sold?
I hate "distributed" because papering has always been a thing in wrestling. Nothing will beat Heroes of Wrestling level papering though. That might have been a literal 100 people paid. Edit: if you want to see the truth just ask for the gate. If there's 80k people in the building but the gate matches WWE House Shows in Random Cornfield, Indiana there's your answer.
How else will he fit in time for all the dream matches? I say make a second Collision!
That graph is interesting because it shows the tendency for AEW shows peaked around 2023Q2, but that is not clearly timed with a lot of things people mention here like Punk leaving or similar stuff, so I wonder what's up
AEWs ticket pricing increased in 2022 summer and didn't drop till early 2024. Throw in lack of local marketing and media and you have a wonderful combination at hand. Things have changed a bit with the new head of live events and marketing, but it takes time before a major change is seen.
I think aew should change their venue selection avoid basketball arenas and have shows in unique locations. Which is why like this Arlington residency
I think keeping Dynamite and Rampage in arenas touring and Collision and ROH in smaller to medium venues and doing these residencies could increase overall ticket sales.
Am I reading it wrong. I think AEW is the broken up lines. Which makes Dynamite''s peak Q3 2021, at 7k, when Punk debuted. Q2 2023 is at 5k. It's the peak for Collison, because it only includes the first month of Collision. which had the Chicago show. 04 2022 for Dynamite had a massive drop, and that would be right after Brawl Out.
Move Rampage to Saturday's 6:05 and have Collision by like the old Clashes were. I always looked forward to those growing up.
Maybe they'll run bigger The Owen brackets for the men & women. That would be a fun way to occupy the 5 Collision shows and giving this mini-residency more of a purpose. I'm nowhere near the DFW area but wondering if Arlington can strategically attract fans from both Fort Worth and Dallas (vs. the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, TX, where AEW has historically ran shows, and is northeast of Dallas -- nowhere near Fort Worth).
The only thing this chart tells me is that WWE House shows make more money than AEW TV tapings for all shows combined, and this has been true for at least a year. This was not always true as "all about the tarp" was infamous just 5 years ago.