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May 25, 2019, proved to be a historic day within the world of professional wrestling. This was, of course, rooted in All Elite Wrestling making its official broadcast debut with its Double Or Nothing live event at the MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was not only the first PG-14 wrestling pay-per-view in a decade, yet also considered to be the first major non-WWE wrestling pay-per-view from a U.S. based company — putting aside Ring Of Honor's involvement in the recent G1 Supercard at New York's Madison Square Garden — in a long, long time.
While information about the viewership of Double Or Nothing has not yet gone public, all signs point to the event being a success both critically and commercially. Ultimately, there leaves little question as to whether or not there is room for a major competitor to WWE in the "sports entertainment" market, and whether there is an audience for the said marketplace. After watching last night's event — including its Buy In pre-show — I am convinced that AEW is here to stay on a long-term basis, and below and on the following slides are reasons as to why that is the case.
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#1 The event had a lot of surprises
When I say that the event had "a lot of surprises," this does not just mean that fans were excited about unannounced walk-ons. This more so brings attention to the fact people were not sure of what was going to happen at the event. Sure, Jon Moxley "could" be signing to AEW, but where were all of the sightings of him prior to his appearing on-camera?
Similarly, Bret Hart appeared on the WWE Network last month as part of a WWE Hall Of Fame induction ceremony. Whoever thought that he would be appearing as part of an AEW event and possibly willing to burn a bridge with WWE? The same question goes for Diamond Dallas Page, who had a quick walk-on appearance during the match between Cody and Dustin Rhodes.
While Brock Lesnar's cameo at last week's Money In The Bank pay-per-view surprised just about everyone — including talent within the match — when someone is backstage for a WWE surprise appearance, generally it is on the Internet. This did not happen with Double Or Nothing, or at least it did not occur within any of the websites or podcasts I regularly source to keep up on things. In turn, AEW clearly has a well-run backstage, doing away with the old "telephone, telegraph, tell-a-wrestler" stereotype.
#2 TV Deals
No matter how great your product is, if you do not have distribution, odds are that it will fail. Without naming names, there are wrestling companies all over the world with a great weekly show inclusive of incredible talent, yet they can only be watched on cable networks that the majority of people do not know about let alone have.
All Elite Wrestling came out of the gate with not just an impressive American television deal via Turner network TNT, but also an impressive partner in the U.K.'s ITV 4; if presented statistics are to be believed, AEW's TV distribution will be better in the U.K. out of the gate than that of WWE. Furthermore, AEW already has a partnership in place with FITE TV, increasing its Internet-based distribution.
Those partners — paired with the company's already-Internet-savvy team, which initially found a fanbase via the Being The Elite web-series — ensure that the proper distribution is in place to get AEW seen not only by wrestling fans, but also people not regularly (or currently) watching wrestling. It will be interesting to see which additional partners come to the table for AEW's distribution in other major territories where wrestling remains popular and mainstream.
#3 All of the announced AEW live events are in big venues
While Double Or Nothing is considered to be All Elite Wrestling's debut event, the roots of AEW go back to last year's All In at the Sears Centre Arena in Illinois. Those two shows were both arena events which sold all publicly-available tickets in much less than one hour.
The third official AEW event is Fight For The Fallen at Daily’s Place Amphitheater at TIAA Bank Field on July 13th. The next event announced for Fight For The Fallen is All Out, which is scheduled for August 31st at the earlier-mentioned Sears Centre. In turn, of the first four announced AEW live events, you have four massive live events.
Looking back into history, wrestling companies had to work their way up into arenas. Furthermore, WWF had some time in both the 1980s and 1990s where some of its live events took place in high school gyms. ECW has been mocked for playing "bingo halls," WCW at one point in the 1990s had to cut down on its house shows for financial reasons, and TNA at a certain point altogether halted its house shows.
So currently AEW is batting 1.000 — to use a baseball term — when it comes to booking high-profile, major shows which people are coming to see. It will be interesting to see what changes are made, if any, once AEW begins its weekly television show.
#4 AEW has multi-generational appeal
One of the most impressive things to me about Double Or Nothing was how inclusive the show was. And I'm not just talking about its use of performers of so many varying backgrounds, since there was representation of all races, genders and sexual orientations. More so I am referring to its usage of talent from various generations.
Showing the range of the age spectrum for Double Or Nothing, MJF — who I interviewed last year for Sportskeeda — is in his early 20s. In the same match were Billy Gunn and Glacier, whose ages need not be mentioned, aside from saying that they were both involved wrestling during the Monday Night Wars. In other matches, you had Awesome Kong wrestling against Kylie Rae and Aja Kong in a match alongside 21-year-old Riho.
As noted earlier, both DDP and Bret Hart — WWE Hall Of Famers in their 60s — both made non-wrestling appearances within Double Or Nothing. This all helps paint AEW as a place where not only talent of all ages and abilities can work, but also a company that fans of all ages can watch and support.
#5 AEW is accessible to the media
As a writer, editor, author and podcaster who strives to write and publish at least one article every day, I am generally at the mercy of managers, publicists and other talent representatives being willing to offer up their talent for interviews. While I have interviewed countless major musicians, actors and athletes, the wrestling business is generally known to be a bit tricky.
In fact, almost all of the interviews I have done with wrestling talent over the years has not come from wrestling company publicists, but rather from representatives of non-wrestling projects for said talent. Sometimes, the artists themselves even make themselves directly available.
In the case of AEW, within minutes of Double Or Nothing going off the air, there was a press release announcing the multi-year signing of Jon Moxley. Also, within hours of Double Or Nothing, there were tons of videos on YouTube of press conferences done by participating talent — including Cody and Dustin Rhodes — and other AEW representatives with wrestling-centric media representatives. And somewhat-humorously the Cody clip embedded above features Mark Henry as an interviewee, in addition to Dave Meltzer and Chris Van Vliet, showing AEW's embracing of all sorts of media outlets.
Time will tell what is ahead for AEW, but if Double Or Nothing is representative of more of what's to come from The Elite and their designated representatives, then we are looking at a fun, inclusive, fan-friendly and reality-oriented wrestling company with excellent production value.
