All Elite Wrestling and NJPW held their Forbidden Door PPV Event this past Sunday night, with several huge matches taking place on the show and a number of huge stars competing on the event. The card was stacked from top to bottom, including the Forbidden Door Buy-In Pre-Show, which was headlined by Gunn Club (Billy Gunn, Austin Gunn and Colten Gunn) teaming with Max Caster to battle and beat NJPW’s L.A. Dojo (The DKC, Kevin Knight, Alex Coughlin and Yuya Uemura) in an 8-Man Tag Team Match, while the PPV Event itself was headlined by Jon Moxley facing “The Ace Of NJPW” Hiroshi Tanahashi in an Interim AEW World Championship Match, with Moxley walking out of the match as the Interim AEW World Champion.
The Forbidden Door PPV is reportedly one of the most successful PPVs in pro wrestling history as Dave Meltzer revealed on a recent edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that early numbers indicate the Forbidden Door Event drew a total of about 125,000 to 127,000 PPV buys, while Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics reports that the show drew about 127,000 PPV buys between AEW’s usual carriers and NJPW World.
Meltzer also noted that the show was down 18% on the PPV streaming buys and 23.9% on cable from AEW’s 2022 Double Or Nothing Event and that about 80% of the PPV buys were from the United States, which is a clear indication that Forbidden was far more important and significant to the AEW fans and the fans in the United States compared to the fans in NJPW and Japan. Meltzer and Thurston also mentioned that the Forbidden Door PPV drew a total of about 7,000 PPV buys on NJPW World, while WrestleTix noted the total tickets sold inside the United States for Forbidden Door was 15,426.
Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics would also reveal that after splitting the Forbidden Door PPV Event revenues with several other carriers, the net revenue of the PPV will come to about $4.4 million, but that does not include any sales from theater viewing or sponsors like DraftKings. For the PPV numbers of Bleacher Report in the United States, it was reportedly not that much low from the last two shows, but FITE and cable numbers from Europe were reportedly not as close to what the last two PPVs drew.
The Forbidden Door PPV is behind the 2021 All Out PPV Event, which drew a total of about $5.6 million in revenue, the 2022 Double Or Nothing PPV Event, which drew a total of about $5.1 million in revenue and the 2022 Revolution PPV Event, which drew a total of about $4.7 million in revenue.
As previously reported, AEW President and CEO Tony Khan took to his Twitter account and revealed that this past Sunday’s Forbidden Door PPV Event drew more than $6 million in total revenue, $1 million in ticket sales and more than $5 million in PPV buys.
The Forbidden Door PPV Event is reportedly the second-highest attended AEW Event in history, trailing only behind the Grand Slam episodes of AEW Dynamite and Rampage inside Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York in September of 2021. The more than $1 million in ticket sales has been predicted for months due to the Forbidden Door PPV selling out almost instantly when tickets went on sale in early May and as for the more than $5 million in PPV buys, if the PPV does draw more than 100,000 buys and with AEW PPVs costing $50 on Bleacher Report and other PPV providers in the United States, then Forbidden Door would definitely go over the $5 million mark.
You can check out Tony Khan’s tweet below:
