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Aside from 2020 and 2021, when events were impacted by Covid-19 restrictions, this year’s G1 Climax finished with the lowest average and total attendance on record since New Japan is believed to have started announcing more honest attendances in mid-2015.
This year’s G1 tournament, which was won by Konosuke Takeshita, averaged 2,267 attendees per event and a total of 43,078 fans across 19 events. That’s down 12% from last year.
The G1 has held across a consistent number of events—usually 19 shows—since 2015, making for a useful comparison that’s suggestive of the popularity of the round robin style tournament, and possibly an indicator of overall fan interest in New Japan.
Match quality of course doesn’t necessarily correlate with business performance, but for hardcore fans one of the G1’s key attractions has been the expectation that viewers will see a number of well-received matches in a short period of time.
While this year’s G1 had many matches that were highly rated by voters on Cagematch.net, this year’s tournament delivered fewer matches rated at least 8 out of 10 than any G1 in years.
Brandon Thurston has written about wrestling business since 2015. He operates and owns Wrestlenomics.