AEW has been drawing smaller crowds than usual in recent months, and it hopes to change that.
So far, the promotion has announced a schedule that extends through early March, as well as a summer tour of Canada. 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.
Dave Meltzer stated on Wrestling Observer Radio that AEW is changing its touring schedule by reducing the number of small market venues. The goal is to run larger markets.
“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.
