ROH Believed To Be Harming Future AEW Collision Ticket Sales

Tony Khan’s reboot of Ring of Honor has arguably not been the rebirth of the legendary indie promotion that many fans were hoping for, with the Khan-produced ROH tapings tacked on top of All Elite Wrestling live TV recordings.

A new report from Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter suggests that the addition of ROH on top of already long AEW TV might be hurting ticket sales, with a source saying the following to Meltzer about the shows themselves:

“Strongly agree with a lot of the things brought up. Definitely advertising guys. I can't tell you the amount of timed we've been doing customer service or just communicating with our clients and to make conversation you mention, ‘Oh hey AEW is coming to your area on X date, are you going?’ And the most common response is who is on the show? And naturally we have no idea because AEW has no idea themselves until days out. WWE will false advertise people but you know certain faces you can absolutely expect. They're never going in to headline with JD and Dominik vs DIY. You will get to see the stars either on the TV portion or a dark match. With AEW... you could easily get a show with no Sting, no Bucks, no Kenny, no Page, no MJF, no FTR.”

Meltzer’s source continues; “I also firmly believe those Saturday tapings are being hurt by having all those ROH matches. You can say oh the fans can leave whenever they want but nobody wants to pay for a live event and leave while it's still going on. It's a psychological thing. And if they stay till the end enduring 13 pointless matches, there is no chance they are returning next time. It's so off putting to most customers. You want people to leave your show on a high and excited to come back. That won't happen if they are leaving mid-event and it certainly isn't happening if they sat through four-and-a-half hours and you are sending them home with a Gringo Loco match.”

AEW’s live attendances for TV have been on a downward trend, with the company struggling to shift tickets for shows. A reported change of approach to the live event schedule is apparently being worked on within AEW, and it remains to be seen if these plans will extend to ROH too.