AEW celebrated its fifth anniversary with the annual Double or Nothing pay-per-view in Las Vegas, Nevada. The show was headlined by the triple main event of Mercedes Mone defeating Willow Nightingale for the AEW TBS Championship, Swerve Strickland retaining the AEW World Championship over Christian Cage, and third-ever Anarchy in the Arena match between Team AEW and The Elite. Now that the dust has settled, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has broken down the financial side of the event.
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Meltzer was reportedly told by AEW that the paid number of fans in the building was 7,500, with an excess of 9,000 people in the building at bell-time. However, it was later reported by Pollstar that a total of 9,099 paid fans were in attendance, generating a gate of $582,204, contradicting the initial gate number Meltzer received of just under $800,000. What Meltzer finds strange about these figures is that the average ticket price would come to $63.99 if the Pollstar numbers are to be believed, which are much lower than what the actual ticket prices were for the show. The 2023 event also generated a similar gate in the T-Mobile Arena, but ticket prices were reportedly much higher.
The number crunching continued when Meltzer discussed the May 25 "AEW Collision" that took place the night before Double or Nothing. The show reportedly drew a gate of $112,298 from 3,944 fans, averaging at around $28.47 per ticket, which Meltzer feels is impossible as AEW ticket prices are much higher than that, even on show day. Meltzer feels that there may have only been around 2,500 fans in attendance for "AEW Collision," with the rest being papered up to the near 4,000 mark, despite the fact that Pollstar are meant to use paid attendance figures.
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