AEW President and CEO Tony Khan appeared on The Ariel Helwani Show to discuss various topics, including the balance of ticket pricing for shows.
Khan said, “Like a lot of the things we’re saying, I think there’s a balance. I’m cognizant of what people are saying and, I’m cognizant of their pricing. I think the AEW pricing, which is lower. And WWE shows are more expensive for the fans than AEW when it comes to the ticketing and the pricing. Now, we have different models when it comes to the distribution. I think that what we do is very good. And it’s been working for us. From the very beginning of AEW, whether it was on the the beginning calls… before we’d ever done a Dynamite being on the phone. And Cody was in some of these phone calls, and Matt and Nick and and different people. [I was] talking about how I always wanted there to be tickets that were in that range of somewhere from $20 to $30 for the fans to be able to get in to the TV shows every week. And that that was going to be a consistent theme in AEW. And there still is inexpensive ticketing and the get-in price is usually pretty fair compared to the competition. It’s always lower, and the ringside seats are also — they’re more expensive than the the highest tier of seats in the arena, but they are still more affordable than our competition, and they always have been. And I hope that they always will be.”
On intending to keep ticket prices affordable:
“I’ll try to keep that affordable pricing. That’s something I care about, making sure that families and friends can get into the event, go to the show. And people who really care about being in the front row or being really close to the ring, people that might will be willing to pay a little bit more for the ticket than just getting into the event. And people that really care about that really close ringside seat, it’s still the most affordable ringside seat you’re going to get for major TV wrestling and pay-per-views. We’re having this great great year, but that’s something that has been consistent from the beginning.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
