SHOCK AEW Money Loss?! WWE DESTROY AEW In Survivor Series Ticket Sales! | WrestleTalk - video Dailymotion

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Do you think AEW is profitable? Let us know in the comments! How Vince McMahon Crashed His Own Company  https://youtu.be/RynVFcZJbbc More wrestling news on https://wrestletalk.com/ SHOCK AEW Money Loss?! WWE DESTROY AEW In Survivor Series Ticket Sales! | WrestleTalk #AEW #WWE #SurvivorSeries  Subscribe to WrestleTalk Podcasts   https://bit.ly/3pEAEIu Subscribe to partsFUNknown for lists, fantasy booking & more  https://bit.ly/32JJsCv Subscribe to NoRollsBarred  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UQPZe-8v4_UP1uxi4Mv6A Subscribe to WrestleTalk  https://bit.ly/3gKdNK3 SUBSCRIBE TO THEM ALL! Make sure to enable ALL push notifications!  Watch the latest wrestling news: https://shorturl.at/pAIV3 Buy WrestleTalk Merch here! https://wrestleshop.com/   Follow WrestleTalk: Twitter: https://twitter.com/_WrestleTalk Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WrestleTalk.Official Patreon: https://goo.gl/2yuJpo WrestleTalk Podcast on iTunes: https://goo.gl/7advjX WrestleTalk Podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3uKx6HD  Written by: Luke Owen Presented by: Luke Owen Thumbnail by: Brandon Syres Image Sourcing by: Brandon Syres  About WrestleTalk: Welcome to the official WrestleTalk YouTube channel! WrestleTalk covers the sport of professional wrestling - including WWE TV shows (both WWE Raw & WWE SmackDown LIVE), PPVs (such as Royal Rumble, WrestleMania & SummerSlam), AEW All Elite Wrestling, Impact Wrestling, ROH, New Japan, and more. Subscribe and enable ALL notifications for the latest wrestling WWE reviews and wrestling news.  Sources used for research:

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00:00 According to a prominent business analyst, I am confident AEW aren't profitable now.

00:07 Lower attendance, lower PPV buy rates, bigger contracts for bigger stars. Does AEW actually

00:14 make money? The answer is no. But also yes.

00:26 The rather glib quote to open these proceedings came from Brandon Thurston of WrestleNomics,

00:31 who said in November 2023, "I'm confident they aren't profitable now. They need to

00:35 make $200 million a year in media rights to get to profitability."

00:41 Like a lot of start-ups, when AEW launched in 2019, it was speculated that it would take

00:46 a while for the company to turn a profit. Tony Khan himself said on AEW Unrestricted

00:51 in March of 2020 that he invested tens of millions of dollars before the very first

00:57 show in signing names like Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, Chris Jericho and The Young Bucks,

01:02 as well as putting together the four PPV events of 2019. But to the surprise of pretty much

01:08 everyone, AEW got a TV deal almost immediately. That deal was announced in May of 2019, and

01:16 then extended in January of 2020 for $175 million - which included the launch of a second

01:23 show in Rampage. Dave Meltzer wrote that it was a deal that will make the company profitable

01:28 in 2020 and beyond. Khan told PWInsider in July of 2021, "We're going to make money

01:35 in wrestling this year because of our great partnerships. Our PPVs are way ahead of anyone's

01:41 projections. They're all up year over year." AEW bounced back following the COVID-19 pandemic,

01:47 helped by the huge All Out PPV which saw the wrestling return of CM Punk, and the debuts

01:51 of top talent in WWE Jumping Ship in Bryan Danielson and Adam Cole. This was followed

01:56 up by an episode of Dynamite from Arthur Ashe Stadium which sold over 20,000 tickets.

02:03 And even with a rocky 2022 and an even rockier 2023, it was reported by Forbes that AEW

02:11 was worth somewhere in the region of $1 billion.

02:16 That sounds healthy and profitable, but it's worth noting that something being 'worth

02:22 something' doesn't mean it's its actual value. Take for example this Satsuma. This

02:29 cost me less than a quid to buy from my local Sainsbury's, but if someone paid a tenner

02:34 for it, then it would be worth £10. They paid over the odds for it, but this Satsuma

02:40 to them is worth £10.

02:42 A better example, a real life example of this is this one of a kind Magic the Gathering

02:48 card from their Lord of the Rings IP crossover. This is one of one. There isn't another

02:54 card like this in the whole world. I won't go into the full story of how he got it, but

02:58 a chap named Brock Trapton opened the pack that had it. And while he would have loved

03:02 to have kept the literal one ring to rule them all, he sold the card to the rapper Post

03:07 Malone. But how much for? Because really, it has no value. It's a one of a kind. It's

03:14 only value is how much Post Malone was willing to pay for it, which was rumoured to be between

03:20 $1 and $2 million. Just think of that story whenever you hear people talk about AEW being

03:25 a $1 billion company. Because AEW in 2023 is a very different company to the one it

03:31 was in 2021. It's now a bigger company.

03:34 In 2023, AEW debuted a new TV show in Collision, which came with extra production costs, as

03:41 well as running Ring of Honor and their own TV tapings, which also came with extra production

03:46 costs. The inclusion of monthly pay-per-views also comes with, you guessed it, more production

03:52 costs. And yeah, there's talent. Ric Flair, Adam Copeland, Mariah May, Jay White to name

03:58 but a few, and the man who at one time was set to be the hottest free agent of 2024,

04:04 Will Ospreay. Ospreay chose AEW over WWE, and it was reported that whoever signed Will

04:11 would be the one with the bigger checkbook.

04:14 In that PWInsider interview I mentioned earlier, the reason TK was talking money was because

04:19 of a report that AEW had sunk eight figures into the development of AEW Fight Forever.

04:25 Khan revealed in that interview that they'd spent $20 million on Epic Games. That's

04:30 the company, by the way, they didn't just spend $20 million on loads of copies of Final

04:34 Fantasy 7. So yeah, there's loads of money being spent on talent, on video games, on

04:41 production, especially when you compare it year on year, so where is the money being

04:45 made? In ticket sales, right?

04:50 WrestleTix revealed that ticket sales for AEW Dynamite on Thursday 24th in Chicago were

04:55 just over 3,500. In 2022 that was just under 5,000. In 2021 it was over 7,000.

05:04 But unlike those previous two years, AEW were not, essentially, running against WWE, who

05:10 decided to put on their Survivor Series PPV in the same market and on the same week that

05:14 Dynamite have run for the week of Thanksgiving for three years in a row. I'm sure that

05:21 was just a coincidence. But WWE did it for a reason, and they proved they were a hotter

05:26 ticket in town. Survivor Series was well on its way to selling out, and then they opened

05:30 up even more seats by removing the LED board and basically sold the show out again. They

05:36 then opened up more sections to sell it out three times over.

05:40 Ticket sales have been a big talking point for All Elite Wrestling in 2023, as the company

05:44 tries to recover from a 2022 that saw fan interest dip while at the same time competing

05:49 against a WWE who was much hotter than it was two years ago. Seemingly every week there's

05:55 a photo from Dynamite's All Collision showing how empty the building is, which has echoes

05:59 of when Smackdown and Raw had the same photos during the latter years of the Vince McMahon

06:04 era. Sure, the Chicago sales for Dynamite could be attributed to its Thanksgiving, though

06:10 that hasn't heard it in the past, but also the loss of CM Punk, who was fired by All

06:14 Elite Wrestling in September 2023 by Tony Khan after an incident at All In at Wembley

06:20 Stadium.

06:21 Speaking of All In, it was the big PPV success of 2023, so it's not all doom and gloom.

06:25 Though the official attendance will never be confirmed, it's somewhere between 72,000

06:30 and 85,000 according to the local council, the official ticket sales for the show put

06:36 it at over 81,000. It was also a big PPV buy rate for the company, revealed on the media

06:43 call for Full Gear as 200,000 buys - which is the second biggest show they've ever

06:49 done behind Double or Nothing 2022 and All Out 2021. Those positives cannot be said for

06:55 all the other shows. All Out, which took place a week later, drew 115,000 PPV buys, and WrestleDream

07:01 the following month in October did around 100,000. That 115,000 PPV buys for All Out

07:07 does sound good on paper, especially because it came the week after another PPV that also

07:12 cost $50, but it's down from the 140 they did on the same show in 2022, and down again

07:18 from 2021. So AEW are running more shows with less audience in attendance and less people

07:24 buying them, and we've not even talked about the fact their number one revenue source,

07:29 the TV deal, is still up in the air.

07:32 There's been reports and rumours of a TV deal for AEW since May of 2023 when Warner

07:38 Brothers Discovery announced a third AEW show for their networks at their upfronts.

07:43 It was reported that the new deal would also be announced, with Wade Keller of PWTorch

07:48 hearing a number of $1.2 billion over five years, but no announcement came. Collision

07:54 struggled with its TV ratings not only because it's on the less than optimal Saturday night

07:59 slot, but also because WWE run their PPVs on Saturdays, and as previously established,

08:05 they are much hotter than AEW right now.

08:09 Dynamite's ratings have fluctuated across 2023, particularly in the final few months

08:14 as it competes against sport. It's had highs of under 900,000 and lows of just over 600,000.

08:21 And although WWE announced two big TV deals, a 40% increase for Smackdown and a reportedly

08:27 70% increase for NXT, there's still nothing concrete for All Elite Wrestling.

08:33 So yeah, there's a lot more money being spent than the past few years, and seemingly

08:38 not as much money as there once was coming in.

08:41 But let me take you back to that Epic Games quote from PWInsider in 2021. Because one

08:47 could look at that as spending $20 million on Epic Games, or perhaps more smartly, you

08:53 would say it was investing.

08:55 Let's look at the full quote from Tony Khan.

08:59 "We put $20 million into Epic Games, which looks pretty smart now because it's worth

09:04 a lot more than that now. This year is a profitable wrestling year for us, and making a big investment

09:11 in gaming is a good thing."

09:13 Not only did Khan invest in gaming, he also told PWInsider that he invested in his talent

09:19 during the pandemic. While a lot of businesses pulled back on this - we saw WWE release over

09:25 100 wrestlers in 2020 and 2021 - AEW kept on every one they could. In fact, they added

09:32 to their roster during the pandemic.

09:34 Khan barely laid off anyone backstage during this time period either, boasting a higher

09:39 than 95% retention rate of staff during the pandemic. And that 8 figure money that AEW

09:45 put into Fight Forever meant that they built their own game on an engine that they own.

09:51 If AEW split away from THQ Nordic for any future versions of the games, they could take

09:56 the entire build of Fight Forever and host it elsewhere because it's theirs. Which

10:00 adds its plus and minus points, the game is far from perfect. But it also means that other

10:05 companies could license their engine.

10:08 And Khan's reinvestment tactics are not just for 2021, telling The Hollywood Reporter

10:12 in 2023, "I have reinvested a lot of the money we gross in this business. Last year,

10:18 we grossed over $100 million. This year, we'll gross far more than $100 million. So our grosses

10:24 will be far higher this year, and I've reinvested much of the money we've grossed back into

10:30 the business."

10:32 In that same interview, Khan also notes that the PPV business model going monthly - while

10:36 costing more to put on - is bringing in more revenue in ticket sales, buy rates and merchandise.

10:41 And history has shown that WWE moving to a monthly business model was pivotal to them

10:46 trying to "regrow" the business in the mid-90s, which then benefited when it exploded

10:52 when the company got hot during the Attitude Era.

10:55 Ring of Honor wasn't just purchasing the promotion, it was reinvesting what he got

11:00 from that purchase. Tony Khan did not own the name All In because it was an ROH show.

11:05 So when he hosted All In at Wembley Stadium and broke all sorts of records in terms of

11:09 ticket sales and merchandise, he was able to boast in the media scrum that the show

11:13 made several times the price of the entire company, "I got quite a steal, to say the

11:19 least."

11:20 So is AEW profitable? No, but also, yeah. Even if AEW got that $1.2 billion deal from

11:29 Warners as Wade Keller originally reported, or they got that $200 million that Brandon

11:34 Thurston thinks they need, Khan would just reinvest it elsewhere. Whether that be in

11:39 video games, in staff, in talent like Will Ospreay, or whatever other part of the business

11:45 he felt needed expanding.

11:47 When The Hollywood Reporter asked him if there was a magic number he would need to hit in

11:50 order for the company to be quote unquote "profitable", he just said, "I typically

11:55 talk about how I reinvest a lot of money."

11:58 The other thing to note about AEW is that, unlike WWE, they're not a publicly traded

12:04 company. They don't have shareholders, they don't have profit margins, they don't

12:08 have a board to answer to. Just like he did when he spent tens of millions on Chris Jericho

12:13 and Kenny Omega to get the company started in 2019, Tony Khan is playing the long game

12:18 by investing money to bolster sections of AEW so they can grow and become bigger and

12:24 better than they were the previous year.

12:26 Is it profitable now? Maybe not, and certainly not if they don't get the $200 million a

12:30 year that Brandon Thurston believes they need. But that doesn't mean that they never will

12:35 be.

12:36 And speaking of money, what is Vince McMahon doing with his now that he sold a load of

12:41 his WWE stock? Is he counting it like Scrooge McDuck or… I don't know what billionaires

12:48 do. So click Oli Davis' video to get a better answer than the one I just gave you.

SHOCK AEW Money Loss?! WWE DESTROY AEW In Survivor Series Ticket Sales! | WrestleTalk

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