WWE Left Red-Faced By MSG Ticket Sales

WWE’s first Raw and SmackDown television tapings at Madison Square Garden in a decade are flopping at the box office.

Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio described the ticket sales for the shows as “absolutely stunning” and “exceedingly disappointing”.

The promotion has largely stayed away from wrestling’s Mecca for everything but twice-annual house shows in recent years, due to the large additional costs associated with running broadcast events from the building.

However, Ring Of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling running the building over WrestleMania Weekend for G1 Supercard and selling out immediately caused WWE to react.

The promotion was expecting Raw to also sell out immediately, much as ROH and NJPW had for G1 Supercard (and as AEW had with All Out in Chicago).

WWE officials wanted their own version of an instant sell out with ridiculously high demand, but that has been far from the case.

There remains a significant amount of tickets available for Raw in most sections and considerably more left for SmackDown the following night.

The reason for the failure to shift tickets has been partly blamed on overpricing, which is in the process of being rectified. However, that would not explain the vast amounts of cheap seats still available.

The shows have also had little interest from scalpers, which in itself is a major surprise in the New York market and suggests WWE is not considered a hot ticket, regardless of where it runs.

This news is another black eye on WWE’s crumbling reputation, putting them a distant third place behind AEW and ROH/NJPW when it comes to being able to promote an event and generate such a buzz that tickets sell out on the first day they are released.

It continues a worrying trend for WWE of attendances dropping across the board. A recent Raw show at the refurbished Nassau Coliseum was expected to sell over 11,000 tickets but barely scraped 8,000 and Stomping Grounds last month was the most poorly-attended WWE pay-per-view event in history.

It will be very interesting to see how Vince McMahon explains this one at the investors call later this week, as no doubt WWE will have been hoping to point to strong MSG ticket sales as a sign that business is on the up.

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