Report: AEW Show At Craven Cottage Not Considered Hugely Profitable
AEW were expected to run their first UK show at Fulham’s Craven Cottage
Before the announcement of All In at Wembley Stadium, many assumed that All Elite Wrestling’s first ever UK show would take place at Fulham FC’s Craven Cottage, due to the Khan family owning both entities.
However, the gamble of running Wembley Stadium has already paid off for AEW, with over 65,000 tickets sold for All In after a week on sale. The capacity of Wembley far exceeds that of Craven Cottage, and the Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s Dave Meltzer suggests that running Craven Cottage wouldn’t have been a hugely profitable move for AEW.
Meltzer suggests that running Wembley was actually more cost-effective than running Craven Cottage, with estimates suggesting that running the show would cost 'over $1 million', meaning a Craven Cottage sell-out of around 20,000 tickets wouldn’t present as high of a profit margin.
Another factor that could have swayed AEW comes down to the Craven Cottage turf, with the costs of removing the turf and replacing it after All In an outlay that wouldn’t have proven cost-effective for AEW. Considering the turf at Wembley will already be removed/protected due to a series of non-sporting events taking place in the iconic stadium throughout August, it was likely a situation that AEW wouldn’t have been responsible for.
