It Could Be Said #45 Where's The Road To Wembley?

A successful ALL IN provides AEW with a valuable opportunity to reset and reverse their decline in North America

With less than a month to go it seems that AEW will finally turn its attention to building the card for their debut at Wembley Stadium. This seemingly lackadaisical approaching to hyping their biggest show ever has begun to grate on the nerves of British and Irish fans, and risks failing to capitalise on the unique opportunity ALL IN presents.

Guests In An American World

Grappl’s JP spoke for many fans in These Isles when he said that we deserve a big show given the support we give the product.

But do we now?

As Britwres Twitter’s resident Brexiter I’m more nationalistic than most, but even I can’t escape the fact that we’re enjoying a product primarily funded through American TV Rights Fees. Warner Bros Discovery is kicking in tens of millions for five hours of programming on stations that are funded by carriage fees which are directly charged back to the customer through cable company bills. Likewise, those adverts which annoy us whilst we watch along on watch wrestling are paid for through products purchased by Americans. Then you have the pay per views which are not only significantly more expensive in America but more widely purchased. Compare all this to the UK where Tony Khan is all but giving away the programming to ITV to maximise reach and prestige, and only a small fraction of UK households are able to buy AEW PPVs through their TV, and then at a heavy discount.

That AEW has drawn huge with ALL IN sadly doesn’t contradict this. It’s expensive to run Wembley for British productions, let alone a company that must ship talent and infrastructure across the Atlantic. It’s worth remembering that WWE refused to run Wembley after Summerslam 1992 for a reason, and that reason was money! Unless AEW can unlock pay-per-view for British households not covered by Virgin Media’s partnership with FITE, then ALL IN may struggle to be as profitable as a major pay per view in America.

Brits Cry

What makes such ‘math’ difficult for individual British or Irish wrestling fan to accept is that they personally spend much more on their hobby than their counterparts in America. WWE has long been on expensive premium-sports channels rather than those included basic packages, and to legally watch AEW live you have to pay for an online subscription service. Meanwhile, going to watch major shows in North America you’re adding a transatlantic flight to the itinerary, which compels the big show to be part of a prolonged and expensive holiday, whereas Americans can do it as a weekend break if they so choose.

We’re also all used to being screwed over, be it the old-school WWF UK-Only PPVs where everyone phoned in their matches or the TV tapings where half the roster had other things to do that day. I’m a big believer that Clash at the Castle being such a great show partially explains why ALL IN tickets sold so quickly, because the Welsh supershow not only underlined how awesome it would be to watch wrestling in a stadium but reassured fans that American promotions would give us matches that mattered. That ALL IN sales seemingly picked up again after WWE’s Money In The Bank weekend despite AEW having not started to build matches for Wembley, further suggests that wrestling fans are responding to enjoying one supershow by purchasing tickets for the next.

AEW prioritising not just Forbidden Door also the launch of Collison, Blood and Guts, and Dynamite 200 over announcing matches for ALL IN has shaken the faith of British fans. And they have two other supershows in September to promote alongside ALL IN.

This lack of depth is an underacknowledged factor in British and Irish fans concerns. Back in 2021, AEW was able to follow up All Out with an excellent Grand Slam card two weeks later because they could have CM Punk debut on one show, and Bryan Danielson debut on the other. It doesn’t feel like there are any rabbits left for Tony Khan to pull out of his hat, and the disorganised booking these past few months means few performers have any sense of momentum or cache.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Meltzer’s Estimates

ALL IN is in very exalted company, with Wrestling Observer reporting:

"It looks like a good bet to be the largest recorded attendance in history aside from the New Japan shows in North Korea in 1995 which were not paid attendance. It is now No. 5 all-time when it comes to attendance at actual paying shows and the WrestleMania III mark is probably a week to ten days away from being broken and with a month left, the 80,709 total now looks like it’s being broken. The actual all-time paid record is certainly possible but far from a sure thing. There are 10,896 tickets still left so the potential looks to be 87,825 total."

I would like to state for the record that I was always more bullish on what AEW could draw in London than the average commentator, right back to before Dynamite even debuted on TNT, as in the summer of 2019 I told Martin Bushby on POST Wrestling that AEW’s first show should be at Craven Cottage. Obviously delays and logistics meant they went to a bigger stadium, and the rapid sales have proven me right to scoff at the likes of Dave Meltzer who tried to pretend that anything better than the first Grand Slam’s 20,000 people in attendance would be a success.

As always having had a real grounding in other combat sports is invaluable, as having written about Carl Froch vs George Groves II at the time, which was the match that ushered in this new era of London stadium boxing, I both knew how big the potential audience was and how difficult it is to make money from them. I mean otherwise it must be a complete coincidence that once AEW had passed the 60,000 people threshold I set as a minimum for an okay attendance, reports starting to appear in the American press that this was around the number that they needed to hit before they could make a profit on the show. And remember Tony Khan’s family tried to buy Wembley, so they know the awkward finances better than most.

AEW really is on course to achieve something incredible in terms of the paid box office. I suspect that announcing matches would not generate that many more live tickets; most people who were going to travel from far away to London for ALL IN have made those plans already. Instead, they’re ramping up the late publicity by sending gregarious veterans such as Paul Wright and Jeff Jarrett to squeeze those last 10,000 ticket sales out of London’s huge local market. It might well be enough to break the all-time paid record.

That would be an astonishing any year, but its particularly impressive considering the challenging year that AEW has had. As silly as it sounds, other than smashing their all-time attendance record, all other metrics suggest that interest and satisfaction with the product is down from previous years. Whereas this time two years ago it felt like AEW could genuinely compete with WWE now we’re back into a situation where NXT is much more likely to overtake Dynamite in viewing figures, than Dynamite overtake RAW. The long-delayed Fight Forever received mediocre reviews and amid a bumper year for fighting games is unsurprisingly struggling to find an audience. The launch of Collison on Saturday nights has been solid rather than spectacular so far, especially as the programme is unproven against football competition. Live attendances have typically been awful, especially in a farcical tour of Canada which Jeff Jarrett is suddenly in no rush to claim credit for arranging. Even pay per view numbers have started to decline.

ALL IN is a unique chance to put the disappointments of the past year behind AEW, not to reward an overseas fanbase that sold out a stadium, but to reenergise a North America fanbase that has become tired and factitious. This should be a moment that reminds everyone that AEW is the biggest and best competition that WWE has had since at least the late 90s. It won’t do that if it looks like a jumped-up house show that British and Irish fans were suckered into attending in their tens of thousands because they were starved of AEW shows. That will turn AEW’s Wrestlemania into its version of a Super ShowDown or Greatest Royal Rumble.

As he celebrates the 200th episode of Dynamite, Tony Khan should refocus on using ALL IN as the moment to relaunch a promotion that has been less than the sum of its parts for too long.