Tony Khan recently sat down to talk with Wade Keller for an interview on PW Torch and during the discussion spoke about AEW’s live event schedule. He noted the process the company goes through to determine which cities to visit and how often they do so. Khan also spoke about how AEW’s live events regularly outdraw major sporting events.
“It’s not the most scientific process but it involves picking our best markets and looking where we’ve done good numbers and trying to make sure we cover some new markets,” Khan said of how the company determines which markets to visit.
He would continue to speak about the challenge of booking big arenas, noting that Rampages and PPVs are harder to book than Dynamite because they take place on weekends.
“We try to find the best venues, look at available dates at the big arenas, which is a big challenge,” Khan continued. “Wednesdays are sometimes a little bit easier to get the dates compared to Fridays for Rampage or a weekend for a PPV. Those weekend dates can be really challenging to find if they are booked way in advance at most of the arenas.”
Tony Khan On Visiting Markets Multiple Times
Keller asked Khan about going to markets a 2nd and 3rd time. Khan responded that AEW has had a great response when visiting their biggest markets, such as Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia, multiple times.
“We did start to hit some markets twice through [before the pandemic]. In 2019, we were the #1 wrestling company in the world in tickets sold per event. In 2020, we were off to a great start and doing even better numbers before the pandemic hit,” Tony Khan continued.
“We had actually gone in early 2020 to some markets again and done really well coming back to Chicago and also we were coming back to Boston and Philly and had great advances there. So, it looked like it was really very strong. We had done a sellout again in Boston for our 2nd time through, and pretty close to a sellout in Philly.”
“We were seeing even before the pandemic the markets were ready to see us again and then after we spent over a year in Daily’s Place there was so much pent up demand for our shows.”
On Outdrawing Major Sporting Events
The AEW President also noted that they often draw better than major sporting events in leagues such as the NBA and NHL.
“There’s really a lot of top sports leagues right now that we outdraw and people talk about these big hot sports leagues and right now AEW outdraws a lot of major sporting events on a regular basis,” Khan continued.
If you use any of the above quotes please credit PW Torch with a H/T to SEScoops for the transcriptions.
