AEW Double or Nothing 2021 Will Feature Capacity Crowd

All Elite Wrestling’s next pay-per-view, Double or Nothing 2021, will mark the first time since Revolution 2020 that the Jacksonville-based promotion will run an event at a capacity crowd. AEW has been operating exclusively out of Daily’s Place Amphitheater since last year’s Double or Nothing, and limited crowds have slowly been allowed to attend television tapings and pay-per-views as the pandemic went on. No matches have been confirmed for the May 30 event as of now.

AEW president Tony Khan made the announcement while appearing on Busted Open Radion on Wednesday. He also announced a house show would take place on Friday, followed by a fan fest on Saturday.

In an interview with Entrepreneur that dropped earlier in the day, Khan discussed one of the most challenging times in AEW’s young life being when the company was forced to leave Daily’s Place last April and produce weeks of television inside of QT Marshall’s Nightmare Factory with only a fraction of the active roster.

“We were doing the best business we’d ever done, and then the pandemic hit,” Khan said. “All of a sudden we went from having our full roster to having less than 30% of them available. In the month of April, 29% of our roster appeared, and the 71% that did not appear included a lot of the biggest stars in the company. And with that 29% of the roster, we fought on. We did win the demo every week, but the ratings were tighter than I wanted. Every week was a dog fight. For these tapings, I really felt like we had to keep the momentum going, but also so that we’ve fulfilled our obligations to our TV partner by producing new shows. The last thing I ever would want to do in this situation with everybody’s livelihood at risk is breach the TV contract. That is our lifeblood revenue stream. And so we taped enough wrestling matches to do up to six or seven weeks of Dynamite. We kept the stories alive, found fresh ways to do it, and I was really proud of the way we literally put over a month’s worth of shows together in 15 minutes; the work held up. As an entrepreneurial object lesson, it’s trying to make the most out of what you have even if your resources are limited, and sometimes it’ll be your best work.”