Both AEW and WWE have run the new UBS Arena in Long Island in recent weeks. WWE’s episode of RAW in the arena on November 29th sold or distributed 5,887 tickets. AEW’s show last night from the same arena sold or distributed 9,583 tickets.
Tony Khan spoke to News 12 recently about outdrawing WWE in the UBS Arena. Khan says that he isn’t trying to compete with WWE, rather they keep trying to go head-to-head with him in various ways.
“I just came to run a show on Long Island and it’s like hey, you know, they jump in the front of the line, run a show ahead of me, try to beat me in a market. Well how did it work out?”
Khan also spoke about the week that WWE extended an episode of Smackdown (airing that week on FS1) so that it would go head-to-head with Rampage.
“You try to compete, like [a] 30-minute window, head-to-head on FOX, FS1 against TNT and I didn’t make that choice for them to extend the broadcast by 30 minutes. I was very surprised to see it. My comments were genuine when I saw it. I’ve been expecting something like that and luckily, we had CM Punk and Ruby Soho and some great stars lined up to wrestle that week or I might have had to change the card and granted, Matt Sydal, CM Punk’s opponent for example, not the biggest star in wrestling.”
AEW vs WWE Ticket Sales
The Twitter account @WrestleTix has been providing updates on WWE and AEW ticket sales.
As illustrated in the charts below, AEW averaged larger attendance for their shows than WWE in November and September. WWE beat AEW in the same category in October, August, and July, however. Bolstered by a John Cena tour and a highly attended SummerSlam event, WWE beat AEW by a wide margin in the summer months.
Khan’s full comments to News 12 can be heard in the video below:
