The war between WWE and AEW is heating up this Friday night when SmackDown and Rampage go head-to-head live on cable television for 30 minutes.
I don’t like AEW’s chances in that one at all. But there is a different battle of the war where All Elite currently has a big advantage over WWE.
The UBS Arena in Long Island, New York, will be home to an upcoming episode of Raw as well as Dynamite within 10 days of each other, around late November and early December.
WrestleTix has provided updated ticket numbers for both events as of Tuesday night, and the difference in tickets sold between the two promotions is staggering:
UBS Arena, Belmont Park - Long Island, NY
— WrestleTix (@WrestleTix) October 13, 2021
WWE Raw • Nov 29
Available Tickets => 4,397
Tickets Distributed => 2,837/7,234 (39%)
AEW Dynamite • Dec 08
Available Tickets => 2,163
Tickets Distributed => 7,536/9,699 (78%)https://t.co/yRCOtL75Yu pic.twitter.com/BSjWsMzxRg
AEW’s tickets distributed (7,536) are more than 2.5 times that of WWE (2,837).
In response to slow ticket sales, WWE began advertising Roman Reigns for the Raw event. Reigns is supposed to be locked into the SmackDown roster as of Oct. 22, but WWE has previously established several ways for wrestlers to get around the roster rules set by the WWE Draft. Perhaps it’s more likely that Roman won’t appear on television and is simply there for a dark match for the live audience.
The UBS Arena is a brand new venue, so it’s alarming that WWE is doing so poorly with ticket sales right now.
What do you make of the disparity in these ticket numbers for WWE and AEW, Cagesiders? Does the number of tickets sold tell us something different than the size of each show’s television audience?