AEW Is Changing Up Its Live Event Touring Strategy

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AEW has been drawing some smaller crowds than usual in recent months and is looking to change that.

Shows

So far, the promotion has announced its schedule through early March in addition to its tour of Canada over the course of the summer. AEW Dynamite drew one of its smallest crowds for the flagship show outside of Daily’s Place from the Enmarket Arena in Savannah, Georgia, with 2,187 as of the afternoon of the show.

While speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that AEW is changing its touring schedule by not running as many small market venues. The plan is to run bigger markets.

Changes

“They got to turn this ticket sale thing around. Because it’s a bad perception when you’re going into some of the cities, and like tonight was bad, but frickin Bowser city on Saturday and New Orleans, and that was the Texas one in the city…Rosenberg, Texas? And Henderson, Nevada. Henderson, Nevada, has under 1000 tickets. I mean, there’s some bad ones coming up. They haven’t really announced anything for March. But what I do know is that they are going to do less shows in Bowser cities and more shows in New York and Philadelphia and San Francisco’s and stuff. They’re not going to run as many small market shows that I know, but I haven’t seen the schedule. But that is definitely…. Kosha Irby is now in charge. And we will see. Like, none of this can be blamed on him. Because none of this was his doing a certain number of things, the deal is that they cut back on those late discounted tickets. That’s a mistake, too. Ultimately, the reality is you’ve got to have a strong product, and you’ve got to have strong local promotion of the product. It’s not a day where you can just, if we book it, they will come. I mean, WWE can do that. But because WWE is so strong, AEW, they need to work really hard to sell tickets,” Meltzer stated.

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