Tony Khan on AEW Outselling WWE Raw at Long Island’s UBS Arena

December 9, 2021, 4:44pm

WWE and AEW found themselves in a unique situation over the past two weeks, as both Monday Night Raw and AEW Dynamite/Rampage ran the UBS Arena on Long Island, New York. The Red Brand first ran the venue on Nov. 29, followed by AEW on Dec. 8, and the big story surrounding the two shows was that the young promotion was actually outdrawing Raw in terms of ticket sales. The final ticket sale numbers, according to WrestleTix, show that Raw only sold 5,887 seats while AEW sold 9,538, though it’s worth noting AEW had more seats available for its show (12,100 to WWE’s 6,706).

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AEW president Tony Khan mentioned the two companies running the same venue in a short amount of time while speaking with News 12 prior to Wednesday’s show. He said (h/t Wrestling Inc.), “I just came to run a show in Long Island and like — it’s like, hey, you know, they’re jumping to the front of the line. Run a show ahead of me. Try to beat me to market. Well, how did it work out?”

He compared the situation to when WWE recently extended an episode of SmackDown by 30 minutes, running head-to-head with Rampage. When the ratings came out the following week, AEW actually beat the Blue Brand during those 30 minutes.

“You tried to compete, [running SmackDown in a] 30-minute window head-to-head on [FS1] against TNT and I didn’t make that choice for them to extend the broadcast by 30 minutes,” Khan said. “Like, I was very surprised to see it. My comments were genuine when I saw it. I’ve been like expecting something like that and luckily we had CM Punk and Ruby Soho and some great stars lined up to wrestle that week or I might’ve had to change the card.”

This week’s Dynamite featured the Dynamite Diamond Ring Battle Royale, Riho defeating Jamie Hayter and Bryan Danielson knocking out John Silver before getting in one last confrontation before their match at Winter is Coming next week. Here’s what AEW has announced for that show so far: