AEW: Three things AEW must avoid doing to be successful
By Jason Reed
AEW’s first pay-per-view, Double or Nothing, was a massive success and has every wrestling fan excited with what could be in the future.
For the past few years, wrestling fans have been outspoken with how bad the quality of wrestling has been, at least in the WWE. While there are plenty of indy promotions to turn to for quality wrestling, nothing was ever viewed as competition by Vince McMahon to fuel change in WWE.
That all changed on May 25, when All Elite Wrestling aired its first pay-per-view show, Double or Nothing. The show did fantastic, garnering plenty of positive reviews from the wrestling community while also reportedly doing somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 buys.
That number might not seem all that impressive but for a $50 pay-per-view, it certainly is. To compare, WWE’s Survivor Series (part of the big four pay-per-views) did 179,000 buys in its last showing before WWE switched to the monthly $9.99 format with the WWE Network.
For the first show of a brand new company, that is a massive success.
All Elite Wrestling still has a while to go before they are on WWE’s level and have the same following. The company’s TV deal with TNT, which starts in 2020, will prove to be the first big hurdle to get over.
If AEW can succeed in the weekly episodic format then WWE will have some true competition. With all of the hype around AEW, it could happen soon, or it could take a few years. Either way, there is a path to get close to WWE’s level of widespread exposure.
The company is going to have to avoid falling into certain traps that could set that path back. Here are those three traps that AEW must avoid to reach the level of success they are looking for.