WWE Up, AEW Down In Direct Attendance Comparisons So Far In 2023

The first two months of 2023 are almost over, and so far, when it comes to live attendance, WWE is showing noticeably more positive momentum than AEW. On Wednesday, the Wrestlenomics Patreon page posted new research from Brandon Thurston and Jason Ounpraseuth looking at WWE and AEW shows so far in 2023 and how the attendance compared to the last show of the same basic type in the same city (Meaning house show, TV taping, or pay-per-view/premium live event, with AEW's "Rampage"-only and "Rampage"/"Battle of the Belts" tapings considered a separate event type because they generally draw less than "Dynamite" tapings). The research uses data from WrestleTix, the Twitter account that uses a Python script to count tickets circulated on the customer-facing seat maps offered by TicketMaster and its competitors.

The biggest difference found, perhaps unsurprisingly, was when comparing the last two times WWE ran "Raw" in Philadelphia, the site of last month's 30th-anniversary show. 14,451 tickets were circulated for that show, a 154 percent increase over the previous taping in the building a year earlier, which had 5,699 tickets out. Last week's "Raw" in Brooklyn, New York, meanwhile, had 10,818 tickets out. That's a slight drop from 11,223 for the October 10 show, but that October show was a big increase from the March 25 edition of "SmackDown" which sold 9,300 tickets, and the November 22, 2021 post-Survivor Series show which drew only 5,484 fans. WWE has also shown a 21 percent increase show-over-show for TV shoots in Orlando, Florida and Greenville, South Carolina.

So far in 2023, AEW has run all but one show in new markets, so the only similar comparison available for the number two promotion is in the Los Angeles market. January 11's "Dynamite" at the Kia Forum had 9,636 tickets out, down 31 percent from the June 1 debut in the same arena that had 13,955 tickets circulated. Looking back further, the December 28 "Dynamite" in Broomfield, Colorado showed positive growth with 4,229 tickets out, a 27 percent increase over the March 4, 2020 debut in the same building days before the COVID-19 lockdown started. Going back earlier in December, the three events in Texas were all down, ranging from drops of 14 percent to 23 percent.

The last increase before Broomfield was June's Forbidden Door pay-per-view in the reliably strong Chicago market, where AEW ran the bigger United Center instead of the smaller NOW Arena that traditionally hosts the All Out PPVs, allowing for a 52 percent increase. Also that month, Independence, Missouri was up 14 percent for the June 8 "Dynamite," and that market also saw a six percent increase over the February 2020 debut for its second show in the market in November 2021. Houston (eight percent) and Pittsburgh (five percent) also showed increases last spring.

Overall, AEW attendance has gone down compared to previous shows in the market over the course of the last year or so, albeit with the caveat that it's still a new company where the first time in the city is a big draw, as it was with AEW's high water mark attendance-wise, September 2021's New York City debut at Arthur Ashe Stadium, which had 19,079 tickets out but dropped 30 percent for the return a year later.