Header photo courtesy of All Elite Wrestling
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All Elite Wrestling’s Full Gear pay-per-view last Saturday is measuring at about 145,000 buys, we’ve learned. This is an early estimate that reflects all buys worldwide, traditional and digital, live and late. Traditional cable and satellite distributors take longer to report, so actual sales may vary accordingly. Late buys, which usually account for about 10% of sales, exceeding or underperforming expectations would also affect final results.
Bleacher Report was the exclusive domestic digital pay-per-view distributor of the live broadcast, which we believe mildly hurt U.S. sales. FITE was added on Sunday, the day after the live broadcast, as a digital distributor for U.S. customers interested in buying the replay. Both Bleacher Report and FITE offered the live PPV to U.S. viewers for AEW’s previous quarterly PPV, All Out, on September 5. FITE sold the event live and afterward internationally, as usual.
The event was also offered internationally via Facebook, but those sales were minor.
Between pay-per-view, tickets, and merchandise, Full Gear likely generated approximately $4 million. Only All Out 2021, which included CM Punk’s first pro wrestling match in seven years, drew more gross revenue. All Out we believe generated more than $5 million, largely driven by an estimated 205,000 PPV buys.
Sales of 145,000 buys worldwide for Full Gear would mean about $7 million in pay-per-view revenue before AEW’s split with distributors. If the average split to AEW is about 45%, then AEW would take about $3 million in pay-per-view revenue.
WrestleTix’s final count (sub required) of tickets distributed at the Target Center in Minneapolis was 10,442. Assuming 96% of that count represents paid tickets and that the normal average ticket price for an AEW PPV is $65, that gives us an estimated gate of approximately $650,000.
If merchandise sold at the venue was about $15 per ticket sold, then that would mean an additional $150,000.
Brandon Thurston has written about wrestling business since 2015. He’s also worked as an independent wrestler and trainer.
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