AEW Full Gear Sees Significant Gain In Theater Viewers Compared To WrestleDream

A lot of wrestling fans visited movie theaters to watch the recent AEW Full Gear pay-per-view, which featured matches such as MJF vs. Jay White, Swerve Strickland vs. "Hangman" Adam Page, and "Timeless" Toni Storm vs. Hikaru Shida. According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the total gross earned from theatrical viewings was up eight percent from AEW's previous pay-per-view WrestleDream. Although an eight percent spike isn't all that impressive on paper, the report noted that WrestleDream screened in 200 theaters, while Full Gear only screened in 120. As such, the total per-screen average was up 80 percent, a significant gain for Tony Khan's promotion.

Full Gear also out-performed WrestleDream in pay-per-view buys, the report added. Per early estimates, Full Gear did between 122,000 and 140,000 buys, which would be approximately 15 percent more than WrestleDream's estimated 110,000 buys. Notably, cable and satellite pay-per-view numbers for Full Gear are "currently incomplete" due to the Thanksgiving holiday, noting that the final buys could be significantly higher. Of course, both Full Gear and WrestleDream paled in comparison to August's All In pay-per-view, which reportedly did nearly 200,000 buys and also set an attendance record for any AEW show in history.

With Full Gear in the rearview mirror, AEW now prepares for its final pay-per-view of 2023, Worlds End, which will be headlined by AEW World Champion MJF defending his title against Samoa Joe. The event will also feature the finals of the ongoing Continental Classic tournament, with the winner unifying the ROH World Championship, the NJPW Strong Openweight Championship, and the newly created AEW Continental Championship to form a new Triple Crown Title.