When my man Cain wrote that he thought this year’s Double or Nothing PPV would be a tough sell for AEW, I agreed with him completely.
Turns out it wasn’t that tough for Tony Khan & company, at least based on Dave Meltzer’s report on streaming buys for Wrestling Observer.
Between B/R Live (which distributed the show online in the United States), and Fite (AEW’s International partner) Double or Nothing 2020 had “between 100,000-110,000 purchases”. That’s up 10% over February’s Revolution event, and second best in the promotion’s brief history.
Once cable sales come in, last weekend’s show could end up tying or surpassing the 2019 Double or Nothing as the most purchased of the five PPVs AEW’s offered. Those numbers take three months or so to finalize, but based on past trends Meltzer estimates they’ll give AEW 115,000 - 120,000 buys from Sat., May 23.
In fairness to Cain, he wrote his post before the Stadium Stampede main event was announced. Is that what helped sell the stream? Was it real sports fans hoping Mike Tyson would get involved in the TNT title bout? Or just a sign that interest in AEW is slowly but steadily growing?
Weigh in with your interpretation of the numbers below.