Dave Meltzer Says WWE Is 'Downplaying' Low SummerSlam Attendance

WWE SummerSlam 2026 is in the books and the wrestling world is still feeling the effects of what went down at the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. However, despite two nights of action, one regular segment from WWE's Premium Live Events was notably missing, the attendance announcement. 

It has been well documented over the past few weeks that this year's SummerSlam was shaping up to have the lowest attendance for WWE's "Biggest Party of the Summer" in several years, to the point where Dave Meltzer on the latest episode of "Wrestling Observer Radio" believes WWE are trying to downplay just how poor the attendance actually was.

"I know that the first night was about 35,000, and I don't know what this one ended up at. But this is the first time I can ever recall a WWE stadium show where neither night they announce an attendance [figure]. I thought maybe on night one, they were waiting for night two so they can say 70,000 people. So that tells you—and also this was very papered too...I mean look, it was 21,000 not that long ago and they papered it to get it to 32,000. Look, 30,000 for pro wrestling is fine, it's not a bad number...Again, from where they were, it's okay. I mean put it this way, if they were happy, we would have heard an announcement, but the fact that we didn't hear an announcement tells you that they are very much downplaying it. But it looked good, I mean they shot it well."

After noting that the stadium was under half full, Bryan Alvarez mentioned that the attendance figure for this year's SummerSlam event is almost half of what WWE did for the 2025 SummerSlam. Meltzer then reiterated the point of mentioning that WWE isn't happy with the attendance for this year's show, and part of the reason could be because AEW All In London 2026 is on course to beat both nights of SummerSlam individually. Meltzer did say that WWE could have exaggerated the number to say that there were 40,000 for each night, but then again, he thinks All In will break the 40,000 mark which WWE will also not be happy about.

Please credit "Wrestling Observer Radio" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.