AEW Arlington, TX Residency notes

Full credit for all of these notes goes to Wrestlenomics. I would 100% recommend you subscribe to their patreon service for the full article and many other pieces they release throughout the year. Brandon's work is among the best. The direct link to the post which has more detail is: here.

Here are some key notes from it:

• AEW is paying a discounted rate of 50% to the Arlington Expo Center and Esports Venues, LLC to use the Esports Stadium for all of the events in July and August.

• The venue contract shows that the $232,000 cost to AEW breaks down as $112,000 to the Arlington Expo Center. The term sheet says that AEW will pay Esports Venues, LLC $120,000 (or $15,000 per event) for the use of the venue's broadcast suite and equipment.

• More ROH shows will be announced as part of this residency. Two of the unannounced ROH TV taping days are on July 28th and August 16th.

• The term sheet refers to a separate agreement that will "seek rental offset from the Arlington Tourism Public Improvement District," but further details weren't evident from the records Brandon received. I would think this means a separate site fee for AEW to offset some costs.

• One part of the contract was redacted in the city's record release because it was a trade secret.

• AEW's production rig will stay in residence even though they will be moving in and out of the venue five times when the company isn't running events. This should keep costs down. They also won't have to lease a production truck for the stay since they'll have access to the venue's production facility.

• Here's the part you will be interested in: records show the venue will be scaled for 1,290 seats, with an average on-sale price of $45 (max potential gate for one event would be $58,080).

• AEW could cover the $232,000 venue cost by selling over 5,000 tickets at an average price of $45 throughout their stay. That turns out to be about 650 ticket sales across the eight events.

• Brandon noted email records with some initial discussion about AEW potentially subletting the space to NJPW or CMLL during the days AEW isn't using the venue. It doesn't appear anything concrete has come of that yet, as AEW wanted to focus on its own dates first.

Again, more detail is on the Wrestlenomics Patreon post, including when the money is due and other interesting notes. My thoughts are this is a good deal for the company that should make Collision a profitable show for a period of time since production costs will be greatly reduced along with travel expenses. They should easily clear the 650 ticket mark for each show and be able to offset the venue cost. I've questioned the viability of Collision as a 2nd weekly touring show long term but this is one way to make it happen without losing money. They'll need to offer strong cards for those later shows here since we don't know how likely it is the same people attend each week or if people will pick their spots. The deal makes all the sense in the world for Collision, ROH and potentially other companies to come in as well. Hopefully the venue and crowd comes off well on TV. That will be huge.

I will have my first estimates for these shows soon!

Image courtesy of Wrestlenomics.