Dave Meltzer Speculates AEW Will Focus On Bigger Markets Due To Low Ticket Sales

According to estimates, AEW has seen lower ticket sales for its events lately, with the January 17 episode of "AEW Dynamite" marking the lowest attendance of the show outside Daily's Place in Jacksonville. The event in North Charleston reached just 2,220 distributed tickets. Meanwhile, Wednesday's edition of "Dynamite," which featured Adam Copeland vs. Minoru Suzuki as the main event, also struggled regarding ticket sales. According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter's Dave Meltzer, AEW may be focusing on bigger markets to run their shows due to this reason. While smaller markets may be cheaper to run, they also draw fewer attendees.

Meltzer said this line of thinking has to do with new COO Kosha Irby, who is in charge of scheduling venues for AEW's events and is said to be highly thought of in the industry, even by some within WWE. He noted that changes in strategy for arena show sales as well as booking venues won't be immediately noticeable, but the changes are happening. Major market shows are expected to visit new regions rather than places like Savannah, Georgia, but Meltzer did not give examples of what other markets AEW might run.

The journalist added that AEW can't make excuses for the crowd of 2,815 that attended last week's "AEW Collision." He said that AEW needs to market their shows differently locally in the cities they run because the continued decline in attendance doesn't look good for touring.