Dave did a big piece on the slow moving tickets. Market is probably the least of it (they haven't ran Cincy in a year and are on pace to do half of last year's ticket sales). It's the booking/presentation. Even Seattle doesn't have great numbers for the first ever show.
Below are some thoughts from Dave:
Dave : When you watch the show now, the audience does react more like a WWE audience than they did a year ago when they first came off the pandemic and in the first year. There is a change.
Gonzales : Is this surprising though considering they brought over WWE guys?
Dave : Yeah, that’s kind of what people have been saying in the sense that they went from their own identity to being guys that WWE didn’t want. You keep bringing in these WWE hotshot guys for a rating and it’s almost like TNA was, if you remember.
I kept thinking some reminds me of TNA, like you bringing this person in, they get this giant pop in the building no matter what and so you think they are bigger stars than (your own) stars. So then (in TNA) AJ was never got their builds because there was always Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner, Booker T, or whoever.
And I think, and there’s definitely exceptions to this like Moxley and Jericho, but sometimes when you watch (the show) you get the feeling that some of these WWE guys, and when you look at what’s happened in the last few weeks, you get the sense that some of these guys would rather be in WWE.
Before, the mentality was that people thought ‘everybody wanted to be in AEW’, it was the cool thing. Some of the WWE guys didn’t want to be in AEW, but pretty much everyone, with very few exceptions, called and inquired. They had interest, even if it was to build up their own pay in WWE negotiations.
So then (in AEW), it got to where some of these guys didn’t want to be there and then there was the implosion between Punk and the Young Bucks.
I felt this a little bit of this in May, that was when I first started feeling it, but there was no numbers to back this up and they were still drawing good. And then, this round of ticket sales was the one where it was like, ‘OK, it’s a lot low’. It’s a story and I don’t know the answer.
The most obvious answer is someone’s got to get hot, perhaps push new guys to the moon who are not retreads, and maybe don’t bring in WWE people? I don’t know if that’s the answer.
I do think the more WWE people you bring in, the more WWE fans you bring in - and that should be a great thing, but maybe that original audience didn’t want those ex-WWE guys other than Moxley and Jericho. Don’t get me wrong, there’s probably others (they wanted as well).
There are guys there from WWE who are very happy in AEW and you can tell by their work, but the ones that aren’t. It is a bad look.
