AEW - SUMMER 2019

[LoneWolf&Subs]

3 minutes ago, Web Conn said:

There’s a difference between video packages and backstage segments with invisible cameras 

Oh yeah we’ll probably get video packages. I have a feeling these Road To shows are the template. But I hope we see a return to the old territory interviews to bring out the characters to hype up matches.

[Casey]

Somehow I tuned out the fact that Brandi announced they'd be unveiling the Women's Championship at All Out.

[Octopus]

So with wins And losses being important, who are the assumed front runners for the Women's Championship? Dr. Brit Baker had the only singles win and the team of Hikaru Shida, Riho, and Ryu Mizunami won their 6-person tag. For Fighter Fest you could argue either Nyla Rose or Yuka Sakazaki could avenge their DoN loss by winning the 3-way against Riho. Allie vs Brandi Rhodes will be both of their first AEW matches, maybe the winner of that gets to be a contender?

It'll be interesting to see how they build to the title match. I'd find it weak if let's say someone like Nyla loses both of her matches and still gets a title shot, after hyping up importance of wins. 

[Jenalysis]

4 hours ago, Web Conn said:

I gotta watch that Jebaily-Michael Nakazawa Match now that I know Je cosplayed Tommy Dreamer November to remember with the outfit and the boot.

The boot was because he tore his Achilles a few days before the match.  He spent the rest of that weekend in a wheelchair.

 

Jebailey's known a bit in the FGC for his big ego.  There's a reason Divekick Jefailey is the way he is.  (Jefailey is what people called him when he lost in the games he competed in)

 

 

 

Edited June 20, 2019 by alstein

[Casey]

18 minutes ago, OctopusCinema said:

So with wins And losses being important, who are the assumed front runners for the Women's Championship? Dr. Brit Baker had the only singles win and the team of Hikaru Shida, Riho, and Ryu Mizunami won their 6-person tag. For Fighter Fest you could argue either Nyla Rose or Yuka Sakazaki could avenge their DoN loss by winning the 3-way against Riho. Allie vs Brandi Rhodes will be both of their first AEW matches, maybe the winner of that gets to be a contender?

It'll be interesting to see how they build to the title match. I'd find it weak if let's say someone like Nyla loses both of her matches and still gets a title shot, after hyping up importance of wins. 

I remember Brandi saying the three way at Fyter Fest won't be the only women's match on the card, but they're already at seven main card matches - and the show is next week. Adding a high profile women's match wouldn't hurt, rounding out the main show card with 8 eight matches.

I suspect the Allie/Brandi match gets changed into a tag team match, since Allie was talking about Awesome Kong being Brandi's personal weapon or whatever during the four way match at Double Or Nothing. Fantasy booking here, but having Allie's mystery partner being Tenille Dashwood would be great (or Kylie/Britt Baker).

In general they need to expand the women's roster a little bit, though. Once TV starts, they can't be flying in people like Sakazaki or Aja Kong or Emi Sakura every week. You need regulars in that division, and so far it's just Nyla, Kylie, Britt Baker, Allie and maybe Brandi. I know Hikaru Shida is moving to the US so she can be full time with AEW, so that's 5 or 6 weekly, active roster members. I just want more out of this women's division, but I'm going to slow my roll a bit here because they've only held one show so far. 

[Web Conn]

@alstein Jebailey said in the video he tore his achilles, I know he wasn't cosplaying Tommy Dreamer. I was making a joke cuz he reminded me alot of Tommy Dreamer in the clips they showed. He does comes off as thinking he's hot shit, I chalked him up as his own biggest fan when I read he had a match on the Pre Show last year. He's the babyface right? 

@Casey I was thinking while watching the video, "when's Tenille Dashwood showing up". She'd be a perfect addition to the roster and am surprised she hasn't signed as far as anyone knows as of yet. Tenile-Allie vs Brandi-Kong would be a cool match.

[Casey]

I think it's only a matter of time. Her return match was announced this week or late last week, against Allie Kat (who would be a good signing too - but she's taking some personal time soon to focus on herself). I wouldn't mind them signing people like Kris Stadtlander, Solo Darling or Ashley Vox. There's a lot of good female talent on the indies that deserve a platform to showcase their stuff.

I forgot about Sadie Gibbs being signed - which I'm excited about. She's super talented.

My top pick remains Madison Eagles, though. She's long overdue for a big promotion to give her a chance. I'd like to see her work with AEW, or get a slot in the Mae Young Classic. But I know she runs her own promotion in Australia so her signing full time with anyone probably isn't going to happen.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

36 minutes ago, Casey said:

I think it's only a matter of time. Her return match was announced this week or late last week, against Allie Kat (who would be a good signing too - but she's taking some personal time soon to focus on herself). I wouldn't mind them signing people like Kris Stadtlander, Solo Darling or Ashley Vox. There's a lot of good female talent on the indies that deserve a platform to showcase their stuff.

I forgot about Sadie Gibbs being signed - which I'm excited about. She's super talented.

My top pick remains Madison Eagles, though. She's long overdue for a big promotion to give her a chance. I'd like to see her work with AEW, or get a slot in the Mae Young Classic. But I know she runs her own promotion in Australia so her signing full time with anyone probably isn't going to happen.

Mercedes Martinez deserves a shot. I think it's ridiculous WWE has used her for the MYC, but didn't sign her. Priscilla Kelly seems like a no-brainer to bring in since she's married to Darby Allin.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

1 hour ago, Casey said:

I remember Brandi saying the three way at Fyter Fest won't be the only women's match on the card, but they're already at seven main card matches - and the show is next week. Adding a high profile women's match wouldn't hurt, rounding out the main show card with 8 eight matches.

I suspect the Allie/Brandi match gets changed into a tag team match, since Allie was talking about Awesome Kong being Brandi's personal weapon or whatever during the four way match at Double Or Nothing. Fantasy booking here, but having Allie's mystery partner being Tenille Dashwood would be great (or Kylie/Britt Baker).

In general they need to expand the women's roster a little bit, though. Once TV starts, they can't be flying in people like Sakazaki or Aja Kong or Emi Sakura every week. You need regulars in that division, and so far it's just Nyla, Kylie, Britt Baker, Allie and maybe Brandi. I know Hikaru Shida is moving to the US so she can be full time with AEW, so that's 5 or 6 weekly, active roster members. I just want more out of this women's division, but I'm going to slow my roll a bit here because they've only held one show so far. 

They also signed Penelope Ford and Bea Priestley.

[Casey]

It looks like they're going to continue on with the Penelope/Janela combination if Double Or Nothing is anything to go by, although that doesn't mean she can't wrestle too (same boat as Brandi - and they've hinted at the two of them forming an alliance on Being The Elite).

Bea Priestly is in the same position as the joshi women, since she's not actually signed and she lives in Japan with Will Ospreay, and is a regular with Stardom.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Casey

[Nice Guy Eddie]

The Twisted Sisterz (Hollidead and Thunder Rosa) wouldn't be a bad addition to the women's roster. 

How about KC Spinelli, who has wrestled for Impact and Toronto's Smash Wrestling?

I'd also consider Canada's Vanessa Kraven, who was in last year's MYC and has also worked for Smash Wrestling; Shimmer; Shine, in addition to working in Japan.

[Casey]

Solo Darling, Ashley Vox & Kimber Lee, too.

CHIKARA has introduced me to a lot of good female wrestlers, now that I think about it.

[Jenalysis]

2 hours ago, Web Conn said:

@alstein Jebailey said in the video he tore his achilles, I know he wasn't cosplaying Tommy Dreamer. I was making a joke cuz he reminded me alot of Tommy Dreamer in the clips they showed. He does comes off as thinking he's hot shit, I chalked him up as his own biggest fan when I read he had a match on the Pre Show last year. He's the babyface right? 

@Casey I was thinking while watching the video, "when's Tenille Dashwood showing up". She'd be a perfect addition to the roster and am surprised she hasn't signed as far as anyone knows as of yet. Tenile-Allie vs Brandi-Kong would be a cool match.

Yeah,  Nakazawa did some cheap anti-American, anti-gamer heat after beating a jobber before the match.

 

Jebailey tore his Achilles trying to learn a missile dropkick (as that was his kick in Divekick)

 

Edited June 20, 2019 by alstein

[RIPPA]

I know some folks won't like this but here is the breakdown of the All Out Ticket sales from the new WON (Spoiler for length)

Spoiler

It was not unexpected that All Elite Wrestling would sell out its next major event, All Out, on 8/31 at the Sears Center in suburban Chicago, or even that it would do so instantly.

But what happened was still stunning. With only two matches announced, a Chris Jericho vs. Hangman Page match to determine the first AEW champion and the strategically announced Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley match released the day before tickets would go on sale with the hope of sparking a ticket rush, the 10,400 seat building sold out in 15 minutes, the length of time it took to process that number of tickets. That was neither surprising, nor the story.

The story was, according to professionals in the ticket industry, was that the show had the most activity when tickets first went on sale of any ticket to a pro wrestling event in history by a wide margin.

This was known before the tickets went on sale because those who signed up before the on-sale were given a number. The numbers were astronomical. At the time sales were called off and the it was shut down, the number in line of individual orders waiting to be served was at least 72,500. There are reports of numbers as high as 75,000 people in line to order, the highest number we’ve been able to confirm was 72,500 and based on stats provided by ticket people who had the ability to monitor this, they had it at 73,500.

There are a lot of factors involved with this. The key factor is that unlike a WrestleMania, in a stadium, there wouldn’t necessary be this level of rush. There have been WrestleManias in the past in arenas that reported one minute sellouts (notably the last time they ran WrestleMania in Los Angeles), but those, like the four minute sellout that AEW reported for Double or Nothing, are misleading. In both case, they put tickets on sale in a pre-sale the day before. They held very few tickets back for the public sale, and of course, those tickets went instantly.

But also, unlike a WrestleMania, the show sold out with a four ticket minimum per order and little scalper activity. At press time there were 827 ticket on the secondary market with the cheapest price for a $30 ticket going for $133. For a normal event in that size of a building, the normal figure would be 2,000 and for a big event it would considerably above that.

The ticket industry was stunned. Based on an event with super high demand that sells out instantly, the number of people waiting for orders as a general rule will break down into 75 percent different individuals and 25 percent of the numbers are bots, scalpers, and assorted other ways to have a number that is actinically inflated with multiple browsers. One outlet monitoring it said that the figure for this show was well below usual in that regard, due to the lower level of ticket broker interest, which the lack of secondary market tickets also confirms. The number reported was 62,500 of “organic individual fans” and the percentage of inflated numbers was much lower than for major WWE, Hamilton, UFC or concert like events.

The ticket on-sale page wasn’t on any of the major ticket broker channels or chatter even with the Double or Nothing sellout, because wrestling isn’t monitored closely and AEW is an unknown and unproven product. The only people who were aware of the ticket demand going in were hardcore fans. The few who were aware from All In, which was a huge success, may have been turned off by the soft secondary market for Double or Nothing in Las Vegas. But the problem with Double or Nothing, which had a huge first-day demand, is that plane tickets and hotels were jacked up big-time for Memorial Day in Las Vegas. For people who didn’t get tickets early, it wasn’t so much the secondary market ticket price, but the expenses of traveling and the lack of local interest, as Las Vegas is not a good wrestling market, that led to a so-so secondary market.

Chicago is the opposite and the belief is the secondary market will stay strong. All In averaged $205 per ticket sold on the secondary market, with sold tickets averaging four times face value.

The biggest WrestleMania in history as far as actual ticket sales went, the Dallas show in 2016, legitimately sold 79,800 tickets. But it also wasn’t sold out until a week before the show. This past year’s event in the New York market, in East Rutherford, NJ, does not have actual ticket sales number available. The show legitimately sold out well in advance. The previous time WWE ran WrestleMania in the same stadium they sold 69,000 tickets, so the number, which is expected to be revealed in the WWE’s KPI report in late July or early August, would be very close to that figure. It sold out even farther in advance due to it being in the New York market, but it had nowhere close to that number of orders the first day, or month, let alone the first 15 minutes of the first day.

As far as what 62,500 individual orders means as far as ticket demand goes, the usual protocol is three tickets per order. Double or Nothing was slightly lower, at 2.9. Figures for this show are not yet available. There would be some duplication in theory, in the sense of the three people in the average order, it could be that two, or all three, were logging in trying to get their three ticket average. The usual method is numbers signing up (the number being 72,500 or more), minus 25 percent on average for duplicates, and then multiplied by three according to those in the industry. But in this case, based on what an expert in this industry said that the 25 percent in this case was for this event was in this case 15 percent.

However, the demand number would not be that high because the event would have sold out at a lower number. The 137,000 estimate we had after the on-sale was over based on the expectation of heavy scalper technology, later confirmed as something that didn’t happen, was told to us by industry pros to be very low. But that would be high, not low, based on how many were served. Realistically, the normal 62,500 times three number is ridiculous. But on the flip side, any number lower than 81,000 is equally implausible.

The key to this was it was all within 15 minutes. This doesn’t account for people who would have decided to buy tickets over the next two-and-a-half months, or those who weren’t so in tune and figured they could get tickets later or even if they logged in 30 minutes in.

While it wasn’t a duplicate method, Rogers Centre officials and ticket officials in Toronto in 2011 for the Georges St-Pierre vs. Jake Shields fight listed that there were orders in over a three day period that would have totaled 105,000 tickets sold for an event that sold out with just under 50,000 sold over the first weekend. There ended up being more than 55,000 between tickets not put on sale at first and later production opens.

There have been concerts with significantly more demand in recent years, as well as sports events. For combat sports, the number of orders for UFC 134 in 2011 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil which sold 14,000 tickets in 74 minutes, had orders on hold that totaled 250,000 tickets that day.

In both case, it was the first event in that country, featuring a national hero defending their title. UFC 134 had Anderson Silva defending against Yushin Okami.

In every case, officials were blindsided by the demand. Dana White thought Toronto was a risk to run a stadium, and only set it up for 30,000 tickets. When they sold out instantly, they started releasing and more, until they got to 50,000, which is why it didn’t sell out instantly.

Nobody knew the demand in Brazil, although the feeling they would sell out an arena was strong, but not at that level.

It should also be noted that both countries have never come close to that demand for a show since. UFC’s second show in Rio de Janeiro did 10,605 people. UFC’s second show in Toronto did sell out the Air Canada Centre, but the third event did not. This type of demand historically is a one-time thing that isn’t duplicated again unless there is a ridiculous attraction. In eight years, UFC has never run another stadium event in North America, although they have run stadiums in Brazil and done well. And economially for North America, it doesn’t make sense because of the economics of running Las Vegas or Madison Square Garden and being able to jack up price, and with money they get benefits from by running Las Vegas, they will make more than running a stadium.

There are a few givens. The show, priced at $30 to $190, was ridiculously underpriced, particularly when the secondary market average price for All In was more than $200. The capacity was far too small. Even Soldier Field would have been far too small. WWE events with nowhere close to the demand generate far more money because of much higher pricing. WrestleMania never had this kind of a first day, week or month demand, let along first 15 minute demand, but WrestleManias can gross more than $15 million and this will probably be closer to $600,000. That’s not to say they would have sold as many tickets at a Mania price range, because that’s unproven. One would say there’s no way on the surface. But nothing about this ticket demand makes any sense.

Tony Khan gave the impression that there’s a reason they did the show at the building. He brought up Starrcade at the Greensboro Coliseum and the Thanksgiving tradition in that city. He’s looking to create that tradition with Labor Day in Chicago at the Sears Center, probably hearing since he was a kid what a big mistake Jim Crockett Promotions made by moving Starrcade to Chicago in 1987 and abandoning the Thanksgiving tradition that had been a part of Greensboro for 26 years. He made that analogy to us as far as why.

But they did leave a ridiculous amount of money on the table. It does create a buzz of a hot ticket, but it’s also never a good thing to turn away customers. People turned away become less invested not more. Zane Bresloff, who came from the concert world, always impressed on me that you wanted a sellout, but you never wanted to turn people away, because those people are less likely to even try for tickets and get frustrated and turned off.

It is notable that AEW has two shows, the 6/29 Fyter Fest in Daytona Beach and 7/13 Fight for the Fallen which are not sold out. It was the idea of this specific show being hot. AEW is doing extremely well for not having television, but whatever the reasons Chicago exploded like this didn’t carry over. It’s not like the announcement of Moxley for Daytona Beach saw tickets them immediately sell out.

And while this does indicate more positivity regarding the potential on television, and Google searches for Double or Nothing were also a positive sign, none of this is a predictor of television numbers, nor that six months from now they could fill a stadium.

But in this scenario, the first show, which would have been All In, was supposed to be the one with the peak demand. Instead, Double or Nothing appeared to top that, and this blew Double or Nothing away.

If nothing else - it is interesting to read how the "ticket industry" makes it estimates and what not in this day and age

[tbarrie]

A 4-ticket minimum order? Do you suppose he meant to say "maximum"?

[RIPPA]

10 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

A 4-ticket minimum order? Do you suppose he meant to say "maximum"?

Yes

[NikoBaltimore]

1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

But they did leave a ridiculous amount of money on the table. It does create a buzz of a hot ticket, but it’s also never a good thing to turn away customers. People turned away become less invested not more. Zane Bresloff, who came from the concert world, always impressed on me that you wanted a sellout, but you never wanted to turn people away, because those people are less likely to even try for tickets and get frustrated and turned off.

This part stuck out to me.  I like the idea of having a traditional venue for Labor Day but this is a risk they could be running into in the future.

[Craig H]

I think they could keep it in Chicago, but move it to the United Center with increased ticket prices.

If nothing else, they're not going to be able to keep budget pricing tickets. It's really awesome that they're accommodating to people with budget concerns and that plays into them being an alternative to WWE, but it can't stay that way forever. It's going to be impossible to keep leaving that much money on the table.

By the way, as far as tickets for big anniversary events go, go with a ticket lottery following what MLB and other sports probably do. The gist of it is this. You sign up by email months in advance to be entered into a ticket lottery. You get an email weeks before the on sale saying you've been selected or you get the better luck next time email. If you're selected, you get a code to enter and purchase tickets. No virtual waiting rooms or anything like that because they limited the amount of people that can get in to buy tickets from the jump. And you're doing it once a year. The notion that people will get frustrated and be turned off from getting denied is silly because if that were the case, the amount of people signing up for the Cubs postseason ticket lottery wouldn't keep increasing each year even after they won the World Series.

[Tromatagon]

Michael Nakazawa's contract allows him to still work for DDT, so he did the DDT Pool Wrestling 2019 in Sumida Sports and Health Center.

He got piledriven on top of a waterslide which ruled but I don't think anyone gif'ed it.  

Also, this, which you'll probably have to click the tweet to see the attached video:

I want AEW to steal this kind of thing liberally and constantly. 

 

Edited June 20, 2019 by Tromatagon

[matt925]

21 hours ago, Casey said:

Somehow I tuned out the fact that Brandi announced they'd be unveiling the Women's Championship at All Out.

Now that they had Bret walk the title out, they’ll have to do it again. Who will they use? Manami Toyota or someone like that?

[RIPPA]

Medusa 

[Casey]

BULL NAKANO.

[Tromatagon]

Madusa was my first guess as well.  They're not flying someone from Japan to hold up a belt.  But they did fly someone in from Canada to hold up a belt.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Tromatagon

[Raziel]

Medusa ticks off the "Hall of Famer, doesn't care if Vince gets pissed, throwback to WCW, and the Senpai notice me" boxes, so likely her.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

Just don't have Medusa speak. She was rambling and awkward at the Crockett Cup prior to the women's title match.