It Could Be Said #46 Where All In's Booking Went Wrong
Taking a look at Mission Possible that AEW has set itself by booking two pay per views so close together
We’re less than a fortnight away from AEW’s British debut at Wembley Stadium and the show is finally coming together. Sadly, the past week has seen a backwards step with the odd decision to have the world champion and his challenger contest a tag team match in the prelims, and rumours that Kenny Omega is to be relegated to a decidedly throwaway trios match. Meanwhile AEW seems to be struggling to manage to simultaneously book matches for both All In and All Out.
Late on Friday night, I reached for the lowest form of pro wrestling commentary to indulge in some fantasy booking. I thought its worth going beyond that to talk about some of the booking challenges AEW has faced and whether they did all they could to overcome them.
Content Treadmill vs Event Tentpole
Before pro wrestling became episodic television it was an event built around major events with television being limited to showcase matches and angles to build the big show where the promotion would make its real money. That became even more pronounced in the 1980s when closed-circuit and pay per view presentations such as Starrcade and Wrestlemania would be the culmination of months of storylines.
This model would start to breakdown in the late-90s as television rights fees became a major source of income for both WCW and WWF. In the fulcrum of the Monday Night Wars major matches were frequently given away on television, something that became more pronounced when promotions felt the pressure of falling ratings in 1999 and 2001 respectively. Coupled with the advent of monthly pay per views, this made it more difficult for WWF to place the same emphasis on Wrestlemania as it had been done previously. The biggest Wrestlemania of this era showed the strain, with Wrestlemania X-7 having no major match confirmed before No Way Out 2001 was in the history books. That was a classic show, but it did mean that WWF had to pretend until the last week of February 2001 that Triple-H may become No. 1 Contender or Kurt Angle may stay champion rather than move straight from the Royal Rumble to promoting The Rock vs Stone Cold Steve Austin as the main event.
WWE has avoid such issues by giving themselves more time between the February Pay Per View and Wrestlemania. But this has created another problem, as often a good build leaves Raw and Smackdown nothing to do in the last couple of weeks before Wrestlemania but hard sell the confirmed card as all the announcements and angles have been made. The perfect example of this was Wrestlemania 26, where WWE did an incredible job putting together a stacked card and pushing it hard, but faced low ratings for the go-home shows because they were clearly time-fillers.
AEW is more vulnerable to these dynamics than WWE. It is a promotion badly on the backfoot as it approaches its fourth birthday, facing a second consecutive year of declining ratings. Worse its once impressively strong performance on pay per view and at the live box office has alarmingly weakened, whilst its merchandise offer remains a joke. And it’s entering rights renegotiations with its broadcast partner making no early move to tie them up, even as it tasks the promotion with delivering solid ratings on Saturday night.
So AEW can not only not risk giving viewers an excuse to skip Dynamite plus it needs to make Collision a success. And as many people that will be crammed into Wembley Stadium, they’re not bringing the tens of millions that television rights fees contribute to AEW’s bottom line. So, I understand AEW wanting to delay announcements so they can tell their storylines and keep fans fully engaged with the weekly television. Of course, Khan has made this worse by clogging up the schedule with counterproductive vanity projects such as Ring of Honor Pay Per Views.
But I do feel there is a middle way between announcing the entire All In card immediately after Forbidden Door and waiting until the last minute. And that is identifying some big, high concept matches or appearances that could be announced in late June/early July whilst letting the rest of the card be revealed organically as the twists and turns of storylines unfold. This is a model that WWE has used successfully in the past, including famously confirming that Mike Tyson would attend that year’s Wrestlemania at Royal Rumble 1998.
For example, just taking storyline threads being toyed with around Forbidden Door, AEW could have:
Had Kenny Omega win in Canada and Will Ospreay issue the desperation challenge for All In, tempting Omega with the chance to beat him in the UK
Build upon Chris Jericho and Sting’s interactions at Forbidden Door by announcing the legends match for Wembley. You could have the trigger for Jericho starting to slip up, lash out at the Jericho Appreciation Society, and consider aligning with Don Callis be the pressure that the dream match was placing on him.
Have CM Punk vs Samoa Joe confirmed based on both men wanting to renew their rivalry after their interactions in the show’s debut rather than meeting in The Owen. Joe can continue defending his ROH TV Titles, Punk can continue building his various other storylines, whilst throwing jabs at each other.
Likewise, given that MJF hasn’t defended the World Title since Double or Nothing, they could have made an early commitment that he would be defending his championship at Wembley, even if his challenger wasn’t known. Such an announcement would actually clarify why Adam Cole is working so hard to ingratiate himself to MJF - he wanted his promised title shot to be at the big show. And if Tony Khan was ever to do something as bold as take Goldberg up on his talk of wanting to do one final show, Wembley is surely the venue, and that signing could’ve been announced at the beginning of summer as well.
In this alternative universe that would have allowed you to do a British press conference as counterprogramming during Money In The Bank weekend with Chris Jericho, Sting, MJF, Kenny Omega, Will Ospreay, CM Punk, Samoa Joe, and Goldberg. You’d have three major matches already announced, and two special attractions confirmed.
You could even throw a sixth into the pot by having Jeff Jarrett, Sayara, Grado and Sayara get into shenanigans at the press conference, in an attempt to attract mainstream attention in the UK, something that is still sorely lacking for All In. That would give you a solid core to promote whilst still leaving the field open for storytelling.
Incidentally, did you know that AEW has not done a proper press conference in the UK for All In yet!?!
Tony Khan Delays and Dissembles Rather Than Decides
It seems that until The Elite re-signed with AEW the plan had been to have The Young Bucks compete in a trios match with Hangman Page against a lower level team they’re friendly with. Them being persuaded to shift to having a match with FTR has caused the whole card to be rejigged for reasons that remain mysterious.
This is a classic example of a key problem with Tony Khan’s booking and talent management - when faced with an obstacle to booking the match he wants, he procrastinates in the hope that something turns up to force the match. Of course, Khan is a rich and powerful man, so he can usually make the seemingly impossible happen at short notice, but often he’d be better taking no for an answer and using the time to instead heat up a match he can already book.
I mean, whilst the rubber match between Omega and Punk’s best mates is a great match to have at Wembley, it’s not a must have. Given the former Tommy End is European and has a WWE pedigree, maybe ‘The Hung Bucks’ challenging for the Trios Title would have been a sensible compromise that could have been agreed with sufficient time for a proper build. That would then free FTR to defend against Aussie Open, building on their great matches last year, and giving a local act that recently signed with AEW the chance to shine. All being equal FTR vs Young Bucks III is the bigger match, but is it really as big as Hung Bucks vs House of Black and FTR vs Aussie Open if the latter two matches can have four or five more weeks of build?
Likewise, a common defence you hear when AEW pay per views run into issues is that AEW is unlucky with injuries. But is it possible that Tony Khan makes its own luck with injuries? For example, he rushed PAC back to fill a void left by Bryan Danielson and Jay Briscoe’s injuries, and then had him working regularly thereafter, which has seemingly led to PAC to physically breakdown again, so robbing All In of a major domestic attraction. Wouldn’t it have been better to stick to whatever PAC’s original return time was, rather than rush him to fill slots where he would mean less?
Likewise, the haphazard booking of the women’s division is often justified by Jamie Hayter being injured. But this makes no sense because Jamie Hayter was clearly badly injured before Double or Nothing. Given the fact that nobody can give us a return date for her, it must have been clear to all but the most deluded that she wasn’t going to make it to the show. If they wanted the same story of a British or European babyface winning the belt at Wembley they could have reached out to one of the many excellent women in the British indie scene and had her issue the challenge to Toni Storm early July. Have that be a ‘Battle of Britain’ special attraction whilst the television focuses on blowing off of the Britt vs Saraya feud and establishing Kris Satlander as TBS Champion. Instead AEW seemed determined to cling onto the faint possibility that Hayter could make the show, and when she couldn’t, they just slapped together any old match.
This failure to make decisions has also hurt the wider weekend, as AEW clearly haven’t given the greenlight to any of their talent performing for British indies because they’re too disorganised to know who will and won’t be on the show, or they want to keep people in reserve if the unwilling or injured need replacing. That has made the indie shows over the weekend far weaker than what many fans originally assumed they would be, and that will have a negative impact on fans perception of any future stadium show as a destination weekend worth travelling for.
Such procrastination can also be seen in how All In will be broadcast. There were hints at its ultimate destination with the initial event announcement referencing 100 Years of Warner Bros but it’s become increasingly clear that AEW’s broadcasters on either side of the Atlantic weren’t interested in showcasing the Wembley supershow. Yet Khan delayed and delayed confirming whether All In would be on pay per view, clearly hoping that a last-minute change of heart from either Warner Bros Discovery or ITV, to achieve his original vision.
Too much is made that this confusion complicates the build; it was known before tickets were announced that All In would be followed by All Out. Unfortunately, given the different public holiday schedules in the UK and USA, there is no way to avoid this. The last weekend of August is a great weekend to hold a travelling supershow in Britain and Europe, and the first weekend of September is a great weekend to hold a travelling supershow in North America. If you want both to exist, they have to coexist, and if you don’t want them to coexist, it’s not the North American show that’s not happening.
But the shift to PPV really was a disaster for All In. If Wembley had been the first AEW show on HBO MAX or even a special episode of Collision, it would have a budget provided by the broadcaster. A streaming or television special would have space for a longer pre-show that was focused on popping the crowd whilst the big matches were concentrated for a time that all Americans could be expected to be up. Not for nothing has All In’s timings changed since the confirmation of it being a pay per view, to conform to such events longer running times. AEW is now trying to promote a pay per view that will begin before large chunks of its American fanbase have even woken up. The history of UFC’s forays into Britain and the Middle East in the late 2000s/early 2010s is that such timings are fatal for pay per view.
And this explains why All Out is getting equal or more attention than All In. All Out will be a failure if it doesn’t hit 120,000 North America household buys, I would be genuinely impressed if All In hits 40,000. If you assume that AEW gets $25 per buy (and they could get more) then that’s a difference in pay per view revenue of $2million. And that’s based on the worst-case scenario for All Out, and the best-case scenario for All Out. Given the costs associated in running a show in a stadium let alone overseas, there is no guarantee that Wembley is more profitable than its Chicago sibling/rival.
Who knows if Khan could have done anything differently to avoid running two pay per views in quick succession. But his failure to admit defeat has contributed to the sense of chaos and farce that has engulfed All In.
Paying Off Storylines
AEW clearly has a model where they want to the last moment to confirm matches for pay per view, not only to protect television viewership but also to time match announcements for when most households decide to buy the pay per view. It’s an approach that is obviously inspired by how UFC does the hard sell for its pay per views during fight week. However, that approach only works if you can sell live tickets on brand alone, which AEW increasingly struggles to do (even All In has caught a second wind in ticket sales as matches have begun to be announced).
What I fear AEW is forgetting that the best UFC hype may be concentrated in the week before the fight night but they’re pulling upon events across a prolonged period. And they have more freedom to suddenly announce matches that are based on years of enmity because they’re not using the same fighters in twice weekly episodic television. AEW alternates between expecting us to treat weeks long builds as lifelong grudge feuds, with Swerve Strickland and AR Fox vs Darby Allin being the latest example or expecting us to ignore weeks long gaps in storylines as happened with Outcasts vs AEW Originals.
Sometimes I wonder whether a busy Tony Khan grew up primarily watching WWF through its pay per views rather than weekly television, and so grew used to seeing pro wrestling through the video packages that Titan Towers would introduce every major PPV match. Those videos would somehow make the most threadbare story seem sophisticated or turn the most nonsensical plot into something coherent. But the reality is that the vast majority of AEW viewers are watching all the television, and can tell when an angle has been hotshotted or parked.
Indeed, the very idea that the Wembley Show is the biggest wrestling show of all time, is a message that has been both hotshot and parked. If you were to edit down everything AEW has done to promote and celebrate All In, it would look very impressive. But the reality is that it’s been an intermittent presence on AEW programming, rather than feeling like a climax the promotion is building towards. The build over the past few weeks has been much like what any other AEW would receive, which does to a certain extent push back on the more hyperbolic claim from aggrieved British and European fans that we’re going to get nothing but a glorified house show.
But surely a show that breaks AEW’s attendance record by more than 300% and will surely sell more tickets than any pro wrestling show in the sport’s history, shouldn’t just have the build of any other pay per view? In reality it’s not even getting that, because it’s having to share its build with All Out.
It’s tempting to say that the way Wembley has exposed AEW’s booking problems, has turned their Wrestlemania into their Starrcade 1997. But even Eric Bischoff at his most coked up, managed to deliver a card that was the culmination of meaningful storylines up and down the card.
We all trust that Tony Khan will oversee a show better than Starrcade 1997 on the night. But is he really running a promotion more coherent or durable than mid-to-late 90s WCW!?!
Concerns are growing.