With AEW seeing a decline in business across all metrics, including live event touring and attendance, the promotion has opted to pivot. Despite a downturn in business, it continues to hold its spot as the second-biggest wrestling company in the world, with some of the best wrestlers on the planet.
In November, AEW opted to move away from larger venues in favor of smaller venues. Part of that move has seen AEW’s debut at New York City’s iconic Hammerstein Ballroom as well as book shows at smaller venues. This will give the shows a different feel from where they’ve been.
While appearing on Josh Martinez of Z100, Chris Jericho praised the promotion for the move to smaller venues.
Jericho stated, “Yeah, it really is man [being excited about the move] I think the worst thing you could ever do is to kind of in any business overprice yourself or overextend yourself. We’re at a place where to go to some of the middle-size venues not in every city but in some of them, it’s a very smart move. For many reasons, but most importantly, just the vibe of the fans and like you want to put 10,000 people into an arena, and if you can, you do. If you’re down to 5,000 but you go to a 4,000-seat arena, it increases demand. It just makes the show that much more exciting, and it translates so much better on TV. I think right now, with all of the different choices that people have to buy tickets to go to shows, I think we’re smart to moving to some of these, like you mentioned, different-sized venues. Because it just makes it cooler, and we have always had the cool factor in AEW, especially when we started and then going into the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic. I think one way is the supply and demand. If you have this many tickets for sale and they’re gone. It just makes the product hotter and you can just continue to grow.”
At ROH Final Battle on Friday night, Jericho went over Matt Cardona to retain the ROH World Title.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Z100 with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
