I was in Washington, D.C., for the very first AEW “Dynamite” back in 2019, which drew 14,219 fans to a packed Capitol One Arena, and averaged 1.4 million viewers on TNT.
And then last week, I was in Norfolk for the latest installment of “Dynamite.”
The numbers for that show: nowhere near the first one.
WrestleTix put the attendance in Chartway Arena on the campus of Old Dominion University last week at 3,232, and Wrestlenomics put the TV viewers at 703,000.
Everybody and their brother with a passing thought about pro wrestling has weighed in to the effect that the problem for AEW is bad booking, which doesn’t explain how WWE is routinely getting arena sellouts and two to three times the viewers on TV with some of the worst booking of the past 30 years.
(Which is saying a lot, because that encompasses Vince Russo eras in WWE, WCW and TNA.)
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- Six reasons why it’s hard for me to watch WWE ‘Raw,’ ‘Smackdown’
Where WWE succeeds is where AEW doesn’t even make an effort.
It’s all about marketing, or in the case of AEW, the lack thereof.
Vince McMahon won the wrestling wars of the 1980s and 1990s not by putting on better wrestling shows, but succeeded in spite of putting on god-awful wrestling shows, by focusing on getting eyeballs on the product.
McMahon is obviously not around anymore, but WWE’s new owners, the folks at TKO, are next-level in terms of their ability to get attention.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach that works, but rather, a kitchen sink – everything from having talents on local TV in the morning to hype an upcoming card, to engaging celebrities to bring their audiences to a special appearance, and then trying to win those new folks over.
WWE puts butts in seats and gets people to watch the company’s interminably boring TV offerings by selling the sizzle.
AEW, under Tony Khan, focuses on the steak – good matches, lots of them, almost too many of them on the big pay-per-view shows, with the operating assumption being, if we have good content, people will want to be there and will want to watch on TV.
A buddy of mine from my days in indie wrestling liked to make the point that Jesus Christ himself would be preaching to empty seats in the pew at the church across town on Sunday if you didn’t let people know ahead of time that he was going to be there.
I think the wrestling content in AEW is fine, and that’s borne out by the consistent numbers that the company gets on TV – consistently mediocre, yes, but consistent.
If Khan really wants his numbers to grow, he’s got to put professionals in charge of the marketing side, and the blueprint they need to follow is the one that McMahon laid out when his dad gifted him the WWE back in the early ‘80s.
If you want people to want the steak, you’ve gotta sell ’em on the sizzle.
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Chris Graham
