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All Elite Wrestling is official


Brian Fowler

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The only reason why I don't think this will sell out is because All In felt like a super special event. It was a celebration of professional wrestling in what is in my opinion the greatest wrestling town in America (but I'm biased since it's also my favorite city...even if it wasn't in the city). It's asking a lot of fans to make that trek twice within 12 months.

There's a couple caveats to this though where I could see it selling out. First, whenever my friends or I look, flights into or out of Vegas from or to O'Hare are pretty reasonable. It's also relatively "close" to where the Bucks home base is so travel on the west coast isn't as bad as it would be for those of us in the Midwest. So given that, you could see something close to a sell out WITH those seats filled.

More realistically, I think we see what happened to some of those first Takeover shows. Brooklyn 1 sells out so fucking fast and it becomes clear to everyone that this is the ticket to buy because you can turn around and sell it for way higher than face value. The next Takeover comes around and sure enough, if I'm remembering correctly, tons of tickets are sold to scalpers and they flip them all over to StubHub for so much higher than face value. Now, for that second Takeover, I think a lot of people wound up buying those tickets on the secondary market, but with the next big show after that, people said fuck this and those secondary market sales tanked. So I guess it's more of a question which is this going to be like: That second Takeover where the house was still damn near full or full even though so many tickets were picked up off of the secondary market, or is it like the third Takeover where the secondary market sales tank because people just aren't going to pay that much over face value.

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What would be really crazy to help sell this is if somehow, someway the Khans can get ad space purchased on the Octagon for UFC 235. That show will be at the T-Mobile Arena in March so if they're looking for a huge push, that's one way to do it. However, I have no idea how much ad space actually costs on the octagon, but maybe Elsalvajeloco could shed some light on that. In any event, that's a long shot, but that would reach a lot of eyeballs.

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7 minutes ago, Craig H said:

What would be really crazy to help sell this is if somehow, someway the Khans can get ad space purchased on the Octagon for UFC 235. That show will be at the T-Mobile Arena in March so if they're looking for a huge push, that's one way to do it. However, I have no idea how much ad space actually costs on the octagon, but maybe Elsalvajeloco could shed some light on that. In any event, that's a long shot, but that would reach a lot of eyeballs.

Eh that’s assuming that a lot of the UFC crowd would be interested in this which I don’t buy. 

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35 minutes ago, Infinit said:

I think they could run 2-4 "flyout" events in big wrestling markets (Chicago, NYC, Toronto, Vegas, Dallas, North Carolina, Florida) a year and run tv in  small/mid sized buildings and they should be ok.

But that’s the conundrum. If the TV networks are interested in this thing because of the success of All In, which has been the rumor, I feel like they’re going to expect that kind crowd all the time. 

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I feel confident their first show will sell out, because they’ve cultivated a high degree of emotional buy-in. That is, people don’t just feel they’re buying tickets to a show, but purchasing at least the possibility of some Pollyanna wrestling future.* Enough people want that to try to will it into being. Of course, the company will then need to show returns on that investment—and the backlash will be as strong as the buy-in if they don’t—but for now there’s enough goodwill to fill an arena. 

*Of course this is all some degree of bullshit. They’re selling a product and trying to make money. But nerd culture—of which wrestling is a part—makes money on fans building their identity around said product and investing heavily. 

Anyway, no one really knows anything about the present of this, much less the future. 

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16 minutes ago, Craig H said:

I see we're back to hyperbole.

Oh, please do explain! Since your second paragraph in your post is all about how scalpers will buy the tickets and resell them, and that's the only realistic way you can see them selling out the arena.

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1 hour ago, Craig H said:

What would be really crazy to help sell this is if somehow, someway the Khans can get ad space purchased on the Octagon for UFC 235. That show will be at the T-Mobile Arena in March so if they're looking for a huge push, that's one way to do it. However, I have no idea how much ad space actually costs on the octagon, but maybe Elsalvajeloco could shed some light on that. In any event, that's a long shot, but that would reach a lot of eyeballs.

 

1 hour ago, Thibs said:

Eh that’s assuming that a lot of the UFC crowd would be interested in this which I don’t buy. 

Honestly, they would have a better shot (and clearly the smartest and most logical option IMO) would be to advertise in and around MGM the week of the Cinco de Mayo fight (looking like Canelo vs. David Lemieux) since that's likely the host hotel. Buying space in the octagon for a show in early March headlined by Jon Jones vs. Anthony Smith would be a waste of time and money. Even though that's more of a narrow fanbase than MMA, putting Mexican talent on that show and having one or two big names on the poster (L.A. Park?) would go further than hoping people remember to watch this show happening three months later after advertising it in March.

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One thing mentioned but glossed over: When casinos hold big live events like this, they typically buy a large number of the tickets, especially the best seats, and then give them to high rollers and similar. Not even really "if it doesn't sell out, we'll buy them" but as part of the contract they get X number of seats blah blah at the price of whatever the events share would've been from selling them.

It's a big part of why the crowds at the three casino Manias were somewhat less invested in the stories than you'd otherwise expect. But it also tends to get the gate up into profitability before the tickets even go on sale.

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1 minute ago, Casey said:

Oh, please do explain! Since your second paragraph in your post is all about how scalpers will buy the tickets and resell them, and that's the only realistic way you can see them selling out the arena.

To start, it's my third paragraph. Second, I presented three scenarios that could all be pretty likely. Third, that particular paragraph wasn't about how that's the only way they'll have a sold out show. Realistically, more scalpers or ticket brokers or whoever are going to see this show as a hot ticket given how successful All In was. You're going to have more folks flooding the virtual waiting room to try and get a piece of the pie and there's few ways to actually prevent that. It's just a fact of life. If they see that people will have that much fervor for a product, they're going to try to cash in on that until it becomes apparent that they can't. It's the same thing that happened with NXT.

Doesn't mean it's the ONLY way the building sells out, but realistically it's bound to happen. And realistically, people are bound to buy a lot of those tickets on secondary markets to the point where you nearly or successfully have a packed house. Again, if NXT is any indication, there will need to be enough fan push back to force sellers to lower their ticket prices to the point where there's no advantage to trying to scoop up a bunch of tickets since they'll just have to be lowered to nearly face value.

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2 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

One thing mentioned but glossed over: When casinos hold big live events like this, they typically buy a large number of the tickets, especially the best seats, and then give them to high rollers and similar. Not even really "if it doesn't sell out, we'll buy them" but as part of the contract they get X number of seats blah blah at the price of whatever the events share would've been from selling them.

It's a big part of why the crowds at the three casino Manias were somewhat less invested in the stories than you'd otherwise expect. But it also tends to get the gate up into profitability before the tickets even go on sale.

I mean, this also. Not that this is even a bad thing if you want your product to look popular. Presumably, mixed in with some high rollers will be celebrities that you can show during the broadcast. Maybe you get a handful of players for the Golden Knights attending or you get others attending that have varying degrees of recognition, like Theo Rossi who was on one of the BTEs.

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Its interesting because I think the second show will sell too, based on it being in Jacksonville and gun violence benefit aspect. 

It looks like they’re strategically setting up these early shows that will sell in order to get momentum going into the fall.

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My hope is that when it comes to touring and their big shows that they stick to pro wrestling hot beds where they'll consistently draw the largest and loudest crowds. This is an idea many of us have tossed around for a long time because some of the towns WWE goes to are just fucking dead so if you're a smaller, up and coming company, why not focus on where you're going to do the best business?

Also, I'm pretty excited for this, but maybe I'm taking too much of a narrow view of how this promotion can be successful. The book has been re-written multiple times for how to fuck up as a wrestling promotion that SOMEONE has to understand what not to do by this point. WWE is NEVER going to be that company because they have their business model and they're far to set in their ways. ROH found some sort of security by being picked up by Sinclair, but when you make a deal with the devil like that, how secure are you? And the less said about Impact/TNA the better. All of these people involved seem far to knowledgeable about the pitfalls and perils of pro wrestling to fuck this up. I really hope they don't.

Ultimately, I don't want something to destroy or unseat WWE. I just want a viable #2 promotion beyond NJPW that's readily and easily accessible and I want each of these companies to push the other to be better.

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When you say hotbed do you mean New York, Philly, Chicago, Charlotte, Atlanta, parts of Texas, Las Vegas, L.A., Cleveland places like that? cuz there's some smaller towns in the mid atlantic region of the united states shit parts of Georgia and Florida that I think would draw well, just to see Dusty's sons wrestling company.

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15 hours ago, Robert said:

 Especaily be careful with the WWE lifers who have known nothing outside that system for all their lives. Like the Bulgarian dude for example. He's never going anywhere. He wouldn't last a day outside WWE on his own without being told where to go, what to do, what to say. He's not the only one but he's the best example of someone people have the wrong impression of because he does funny videos. 

The guy who emigrated to the US and learned another language to become a pro wrestler? And who has got over repeatedly despite the evil foreign heel gimmick having a pretty short shelf life? Yeah he doesn't seem capable of doing anything without having his hand held ?

Some info on his pre-WWE days here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusev_(wrestler)

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18 minutes ago, Web Conn said:

When you say hotbed do you mean New York, Philly, Chicago, Charlotte, Atlanta, parts of Texas, Las Vegas, L.A., Cleveland places like that? cuz there's some smaller towns in the mid atlantic region of the united states shit parts of Georgia and Florida that I think would draw well, just to see Dusty's sons wrestling company.

Basically. I mean, is there really a need to hit up Omaha, Fort Wayne, IN, Indianapolis, OK City, etc. when you could tour places like Chicago, LA, Minneapolis, Philly and the other smaller places you mentioned where seeing Dusty's kid's promotion might be a draw?

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I keep wondering what their definition of being a success will be, especially on the live event run. Are they content running--and probably selling out--the smal/mid sized venues that ROH and NXT book. Or are they aiming bigger? I think at this point I'm less interested in seeing who is on their roster and more into what their goal is.

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Just now, Fallacy! said:

After listening to Tony Khan’s interview on X-Pac’s podcast I realized that AEW is going to let us bear witness to what happens when a WON Board poster gets a blank check to run a wrestling company.

Dear god.

Actually, it’ll be pretty amusing to see Meltzer’s ideal product go down in flames. It’ll be the final nail into whatever credibility he had left. 

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18 minutes ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Sure it will. 

Did u listen to the podcast?

Apparently he wants to incorporate numbers, win/loss records and present it as boxing. He cited Goldberg’s streak. Don’t think he understands that it wasn’t the streak that worked, it was the aura. 

 

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