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AEW Forbidden Door in Toronto

AEW and New Japan’s jointly-promoted Forbidden Door pay-per-view event I estimate grossed about $7.4 million, between pay-per-view, ticket, and merchandise sales on Sunday night. After the cut taken by par-per-view carriers, I estimate the net revenue to the wrestling companies to be about $4.9 million. That’s probably on the high end of AEW’s recent PPV events. Tony Khan, at the post-event press conference late Sunday night, said pay-per-view buys for Forbidden Door were outperforming last year’s event of the same name, as well as the previous month’s Double or Nothing event. I believe last year’s Forbidden Door sold about 140,000 buys across all platforms globally, including on NJPW World. Last month’s PPV was projected to sell about that number, according to a report earlier this month from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. No PPV since the Double or Nothing event in 2022, has sold much more than 140,000 buys, which makes this year’s Forbidden Door likely to be the best-selling PPV in just over a year. PPV sales with traditional carriers take months to finalize. Khan also tweeted that Forbidden Door in Toronto set a new live gate record for AEW, at about $1.2 million in ticket sales. I believe that edges out Double or Nothing 2022, which was the previous high mark for AEW. All In will shatter the record by multiple times in August, as sales for that event in London are already over $8 million. WrestleTix estimated 13,631 tickets distributed for Forbidden Door. AEW announced the attendance as 14,826. Pollstar lists the live gate for Double or Nothing 2022, last year’s event, as $1,256,272, which would round up to $1.3 million, higher than the $1.2 million Khan said was the gross for Sunday’s event. Pollstar numbers are usually but not always accurate. Multiple people at AEW told me that Forbidden Door this year indeed set the new live gate record for the company. It’s also possible that Pollstar’s data for Double or Nothing 2022 includes combo ticket sales to the PPV event as well as the Rampage the Friday before in the same venue, which distorted the Pollstar number for last year’s Double or Nothing. There were no combo sales offers for Forbidden Door. Pollstar lists the gate for Full Gear 2022, in November, at $1,199,486, which is another event seemingly close to the new record. At one point during the late Sunday-early Monday press conference following Forbidden Door, Chris Jericho interrupted to shoot an angle with Sting and Darby Allin to set up a match for Wednesday’s Dynamite. In the course of the angle, he swung his baseball bat against the wall and later took a plastic water bottle that he threw in the air and hit with the bat toward seated media members, which struck John Muse sitting in the front row and caused him to bleed just above his eye. Muse, who was there representing WONF4W, was eventually taken away and given help, then returned to the press conference, so, fortunately, it seemed he wasn’t hurt too badly in a situation that could’ve been much worse. I’m not a performer anymore and certainly am not in these settings, and neither are any of the other members of the media. For whatever criticisms wrestling media are due, we’re certainly not there to assume physical risk. It’s one thing for media to be used as props for in-character promos at these press conferences, but it’s another entirely, and foolishly opens AEW up to legal liability, to expose us to possible injury when this semi-worked situation suddenly turns into a wrestling angle. It’s almost as if media members are just so taken for granted that it’s assumed we’ll gladly risk physical injury in exchange for precious access. Tony Khan noticed in the moment what happened and said to Jericho, “That’s unacceptable” and later looked at Muse and said, “I’m sorry about that. Are you okay? Yeah, we gotta get you checked out. I’m sorry, Chris is out of control.” But in the ambiguity, was that Tony Khan, the character, speaking disapprovingly about a heel’s bad behavior, or was it the real-life executive speaking about a talent who crossed a line?

Additional news

Impact Wrestling on Thursday night on AXS TV was watched by 110,000 viewers. New Japan Pro Wrestling, right after, averaged 57,000 viewers. Both shows had a 0.01 P18-49 rating. See the table at the bottom of this report for monthly averages.
WWE Most Wanted Treasures on A&E on Sunday night averaged 333,000 viewers and a 0.11 P18-49 rating at 9 pm, ranking #24 among cable originals, according to Showbuzz Daily. Stone Cold Takes on at 10 pm on A&E had 200,000 viewers and a 0.06 P18-49 rating, #60. See the tables at the bottom of this report for comparisons to previous episodes.
AEW announced on Sunday night that All Out will take place at the United Center in Chicago, on September 3. AEW Collision will be at the same location the night prior, on September 2, going head-to-head with WWE’s PLE Payback live from Pittsburgh. AEW will tape Dynamite and Rampage at the NOW Arena on August 30, in Schaumberg, IL, just outside Chicago, where All Out and the original All In took place in previous years.
AEW’s first console game, Fight Forever, will be released on Thursday. John Pollock and I will talk with Insider Gaming reporter Mike Straw on Thursday for the latest episode of “Pollock & Thurston”.
Showbuzz Daily announced this morning that after this week they won’t be reporting TV ratings data. Wrestlenomics will continue to report wrestling TV ratings as normal, although Showbuzz Daily was a valuable resource for rankings and other telecasts throughout cable and broadcast. I hope other sources will continue to make TV ratings data available including SpoilerTV, Programming Insider, and TV Series Finale, although some of their reporting seemed to be relying on Showbuzz. The announcement cited the shift of viewership generally from linear to streaming as part of the reason for permanently discontinuing reporting. I would note, however, while streaming definitely continues to grow and is especially popular with younger viewers, the majority of all TV time in the U.S. (54% in April) is still through traditional cable and broadcast, according to Nielsen.

TV ratings: WWE Raw, June 26

WWE Raw last night on USA Network, was watched by 1,973,000 viewers on average, including about 791,000 aged 18 to 49, for a 0.61 P18-49 rating. Raw ranked #2 in P18-49 among cable originals for the day, according to Showbuzz Daily. Including broadcast primetime, it also ranked #2, ahead of everything on broadcast primetime. The College World Series on ESPN and ESPNU was #1 for the day. This was Raw’s highest in both P18-49 and total viewership since the post-Wrestlemania episode on April 3. Compared to last week, Raw was up 8% in total viewership. Among viewers 18-49, viewership was up 9%. Viewer counts in thousands, calculated from national ratings, for this week’s episode with difference versus the median of the last 28 days in parentheses: P2+: 1973 (+15%) P18-49: 791 (+12%) M18-49: 509 (+12%) F18-49: 286 (+19%) P18-34: 326 (+23%) P35-49: 466 (+9%) F12-34: 146 (+27%) M12-34: 259 (+46%) P25-54: 961 (+17%) P50+: 1018 (+10%) Most-viewed YouTube videos from Raw, as of 4pm today: Cody Rhodes goes head-to-head with Damian Priest: 294,403 Seth “Freakin” Rollins brawls with Finn Bálor: 293,174 Cody Rhodes to Dominik Mysterio: 259,856 Carmelo Hayes vs. Finn Bálor: 220,427 Riddle helps Zayn and Owens fight off Imperium: 207,024 Chaos ensues en route to the Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match: 203,316 Raquel Rodriguez battles Ronda Rousey: 178,669 Sami Zayn vs. Gunther: 166,092 Dominik Mysterio vs. Akira Tozawa: 146,221 Raw’s most out-of-control moments: 142,662 This ratings report was written with the assistance of automated programs created by me, then manually edited. Subscribers have exclusive access to the Wrestlenomics Viewership Spreadsheet. Brandon Thurston brandon@wrestlenomics.com