Michael Perry on March 1, 2022
Vince McMahon took WWE’s sparsely attended holiday trip to Madison Square Garden personally. The promotion does not want to see another house show with poor ticket sales at the world’s most famous arena, or anywhere else for that matter. A renewed push and the addition of big names to these live events is hoped to generate interest and increase attendance.
With AEW Dynamite averaging more paid fans than WWE at the end of 2021, there was concern about the dwindling house show numbers. WWE began to heavily promote their upcoming MSG live event on television. It was a tactic that WWE rarely employs.
The addition of Ronda Rousey and a strong SmackDown led to excellent weekend numbers for WWE. The company saw huge spikes in ticket sales after announcing Rousey. The strategy appears to be working, according to Dave Meltzer on the latest Wrestling Observer Radio.
“They had the Lesnar and Roman Reigns contract signing. They had Ronda Rousey who is drawing people right now. The house shows over the weekend did big last couple of days after Ronda Rousey was announced and these were shows, Rochester, on Sunday, was dying until about a week ago. It was in the two thousands and ended up at like 4,600. I mean, they had a great last couple days.
We’ll see if that happens to The Garden. The Garden was at 5,600 as of the last time I checked. That is the most pushed house show… When was the last time they ever pushed a house show like that?”
The last time WWE ran Madison Square Garden, the event saw the company’s lowest attendance at the venue since 1940. Under 5,000 people showed up. The addition of major stars as well as a renewed marketing push has WWE optimistic that they will do better this time.
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March 1, 2022 7:58 am
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