Will Tony Khan learn something from the AEW Grand Slam: Australia debacle?

This isn’t going to be a completely negative AEW column because I want to praise AEW for at least taking the risk of doing a huge show outside of North America and the United Kingdom.

I feel like it took a lot of guts from Tony Khan to try and do a stadium show in a country where AEW doesn’t have a lot of exposure, but we all saw that the whole thing was dead on arrival, which makes me think this show should be a learning opportunity for Tony about how badly the promotion department needs to change.

Before I start with the whole history behind this show, I just want to say that as far as the build-up for the show is concerned, I have to say that it’s been pretty strong over the last few weeks. They might only have two matches announced, but both matches intrigue me, and I might try to watch the show if it’s playing in Canada—especially for the Storm vs. May title match.

But on a business front, this was less of a grand slam and more of a foul ball to left field, and that’s where they need to learn from this situation and make sure they don’t make the same mistakes.

So, we all know how this started. They announced this show at last year’s All In event, and it was supposed to take place in Brisbane in a huge stadium. I’m guessing that this move was because Tony saw WWE sell out the same stadium earlier last year and thought AEW was hot enough in Australia to do the same thing. That was the first mistake they made, as they should have studied the situation better before announcing the event.

After a few months of the event being on sale and very low ticket sales, AEW decided to move this show from the stadium to a smaller arena. This was a smart move at the time since they would have looked like a complete joke if they went through with the stadium show. So at the time, while the term “grand slam” didn’t make much sense anymore, at least they made sure that they wouldn’t do a show in front of an almost empty stadium. Again, smart move by Tony, and they could hope that by making this move, they could sell more tickets and fill the arena.

Sadly, this didn’t happen, and the move didn’t lead to an increase in ticket sales. In fact, they barely sold any more tickets for the event outside of those already purchased, and they are now forced to pretty much give away tickets in the hope that they can fill out the arena. Like I always say, this is never a good business move, as it shows how bad your business is when you need to beg people to take free tickets for the show.

Again, this is a lesson that Tony could learn from. If he put as much energy into marketing his shows as he does into creative, this type of thing wouldn’t happen for AEW. He really needs to realize that his brand isn’t the hot brand in wrestling anymore, and he can’t just say “AEW is coming to town” and expect tickets to sell. He needs to actually do a lot of promotion for these shows, especially when doing them in a new market. Just being AEW isn’t enough anymore, and fans will forget that you’re coming to town if you don’t remind them.

Now, let’s go to the broadcasting part of the story. At first, this was supposed to be a PPV-type show when it was first announced, which would have been a neat idea as it was their first show in Australia in a big stadium. But that idea was taken off the table the minute the show got moved from the stadium to an arena.

Then, the idea was to either air this as a special Dynamite or Collision episode. While that was a downgrade from what it was supposed to be, at least it wasn’t a total loss. However, this week, it was announced that the show will air on tape delay on Saturday the 15th, which came with a miscommunication between AEW and TNT executives. AEW advertised the show at 8 PM, not realizing that NBA All-Star coverage was playing in that time slot, and they were forced to move the show to 10:30 PM—far from an ideal time slot, especially during one of the biggest weekends for basketball fans, who probably won’t watch wrestling.

The only saving grace would be if MAX subscribers could watch the show early, which is still up in the air right now. Even then, with spoilers being out for almost a day before the show actually airs, it’s going to be hard to convince fans to watch or get excited for a show when they already know the results.

So, what could have been a really great moment for AEW—and god knows they need one right now—has become a total disaster business-wise for the company. That’s sad to see because the card is actually starting to look strong and has some interesting matches on it.

I really hope that Tony is going to learn something from this whole mess because this is all on him and his lack of promotion and marketing efforts for the show. Australia wasn’t a huge market for AEW, and Tony should have been marketing the hell out of the event to make sure fans knew they were coming to town for a big show. He could have advertised some of the stars that would probably be on the show—it’s not like they don’t have stars from that part of the world on their roster.

Build the show around Toni Storm—or even, if he’s from New Zealand, build it around Jay White. But build the show around somebody. By doing absolutely nothing, it led to very low ticket sales and having to do a lame 2-for-1 promotion in hopes that it would move enough tickets to make them look strong.

They can’t do anything about the TV side of the mess, as they are at the mercy of the TV execs. Quite frankly, WBD only gave them this huge TV deal because they needed cheap filler programming, and they knew that Tony wouldn’t mind when they asked him to move his shows from their normal time slots. But he could have done something about the low ticket sales—and sadly, he didn’t.

That’s AEW in a nutshell.

They have a pretty good product that they could sell—if they actually made the effort to promote it. But that means putting people in charge of the promotional department who are just as passionate about the product as Tony is about creative. Until that problem is fixed, AEW will continue to find itself in these situations, and ticket sales will continue to decline—no matter how great the product is.