This past March 7th, All Elite Wrestling held their first major PPV Event of 2021 known as Revolution and it featured the AEW World Champion Kenny Omega going up against Jon Moxley in an Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch in the main event of the evening, with Kenny Omega’s AEW World Title on the line. All Elite Wrestling’s Revolution PPV also featured a major “Hall of Fame-worthy talent” signing, revealed to be none other than wrestling legend Christian Cage.
AEW Revolution’s Event numbers reportedly look to be the strongest not only in the history of AEW but the strongest PPV numbers for any non-WWE show in the U.S. since 1999. The promotion’s Revolution PPV reportedly did an excess of $6 million and will likely end up closer to $7 million, but despite these reports, Wrestlenomics revealed that AEW’s Revolution PPV did just over $5 million, based on the full breakdown (PPV buys, ticket and merchandise sales) that they themselves reported.
Dave Meltzer then noted on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that the figures which were submitted by Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics, which states that AEW will take around 50% of the total revenue as they have an agreement with their distribution partners will actually be lower than 50%. AEW receives 45% of the total gross from B/R Live and television in the United States, while for FITE TV and other international distributors, the promotion gets a cut of 40%.
Meltzer also said that depending on the number of television PPV buys as well as late PPV buys, AEW’s Revolution PPV will be able to do between 122,000 and 137,000 PPV buys and that since it was an early reported television PPV buy, the numbers would increase 10-15%, but All Elite Wrestling will probably get less than that and that is due to AEW having more hardcore fans and fewer casual fans.
On a recent edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer said that the officials in AEW have noted that “they won’t know the [television PPV] numbers until 60 days after the event, but they are not expecting the number to be in the 71,000 range.” It should also be noted that Friday, May 7th marked the 60th day after AEW Revolution took place, which means that the actual PPV buy numbers will be revealed in the next couple of days.
