Last night during the AEW Zero Hour broadcast before All In 2024, All Elite Wrestling announced they would be going to Australia in 2025.
AEW Grand Slam: Australia will take place in the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia on February 15, 2025. This is the third announced stadium show for All Elite Wrestling in 2025, with Wrestle Dynasty in Tokyo, Japan in January and All In 2025 in Arlington, Texas in July.
The event was rumoured weeks prior with speculation to this being a risky endeavour for All Elite Wrestling to embark upon. AEW prior to 2023 only ran Arthur Ashe Stadium as a stadium event, which had a capacity of 20,177. All In 2023 had a distributed tickets of 81,035 and a turnstile number of 72,265. All In 2024 was updated by WrestleTix at 53,393 distributed but that number could change based on private box numbers.
Wrestle Dynasty will be a co-promoted show between New Japan Pro Wrestling, All Elite Wrestling, and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre on January 5, 2025 at the Tokyo Dome, and will be treated like a second night of Wrestle Kingdom 19 (it will also have an earlier start time so folks in North America can start watching at 11PM EST instead or 3AM EST like Wrestle Kingdom.) A lot of the promotional aspect will be handled by NJPW, no different to AEW handling it for Forbidden Door despite it being a co-promotional event.
All In 2025 in Arlington, Texas will be on July 12, 2025 and be the first major stadium show in North America. AEW will have to work hard to fill Globe Life Field, which has a capacity for 40,000 but I expect AEW to set up something for 30,000.
Suncorp Stadium, also known as Lang Park (“The Cauldron”) is a three-tiered sporting stadium with a capacity for 52,500 (almost 60,000 if you are Ed Sheeran.) I expect AEW to set up for 35,000. I did a search for wrestling events in Brisbane, Australia since 2000. There was a WCW Monday Nitro in 2000 that did 9,000. A 2005 WWE Raw house show drew 12,000. The Hukamania: Let The Battle Begin tour in 2009 with Hulk Hogan facing Ric Flair in the main event drew an estimated 5,000. The NWA/WAOA The World Is A Vampire Australian Tour in 2023 I sadly was unable to find attendance numbers.
World Wrestling Entertainment has not run Brisbane, Australia since 2019, opting instead for Perth back in February of this year for Elimination Chamber: Perth which drew 52,590 according to Jason Powell of Pro Wrestling.net. WWE also held a Super Show-Down in Melbourne, Australia which claimed to draw 70,309 but was disputed by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer to be closer to 62,000.
Whatever the real number, I don’t expect AEW to try to surpass what WWE has drawn in Australia in the past but I do expect them to outdraw what WWE has done in Brisbane, Australia. They don’t have to try to run for 50,000 to do this. They can essentially run for 30,000 to 35,000 with a nice set and still become the largest wrestling show in Brisbane, Australia history. Unless I missed something (my knowledge of Brisbane pro wrestling is admittedly limited), AEW could run for 20,000 and still get that Brisbane wrestling record.
AEW is having attendance issues in North America, specifically their shows between now and WrestleDream. The Champaign, Illinois show on August 28, Sioux Falls, South Dakota on August 31, Milwaukee, Wisconsin on September 4, Lexington, Kentucky on September 11, Dayton, Ohio on September 12, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on September, 18 all look to be drawing under 2,000 prior to event date. All of these could see spikes in sales 48 hours prior to the show (this has become more common for AEW) but it’s still not a good thing to see.
I will say though that these shows are more the fault of AEW’s live events team for picking extremely small cities for a major TV show. Champaign is 88,000 people with 236,000 in the metropolitan area. Sioux Falls is barely 200,000. Wilkes-Barre is an AHL hockey town with 44,300 trying to piggyback the Scranton metro area. Why is AEW going to these locations instead of major city hubs? I should remind people that when AEW went to London, Ontario, Canada some were scratching their head to why AEW would try such a city. They have a population of over 422,000 people.
Grand Slam in Arthur Ashe Stadium on September 25, the name sake of this Brisbane show, is particularly worrying. In 2022 it drew over 20,000. In 2023 it drew 11,000. Currently it sits at 3,621 according to WrestleTix. This at least is more sensible to worry about as it’s a major TV event that used to feel like one of AEW’s premier events and now they struggle to sell 5,000 tickets weeks before the event, let alone 10,000.
But all this worrying ignores the fact that two weeks ago, when AEW was in rumoured talks for a show in Australia, there were three stadiums involved in the discussion. When this was discussed, Wrestling Observer pointed out that live entertainment company TEG would be backing the show. AEW is not doing this all on their own dollar. In other words, unlike the AEW weekly shows currently struggling to cross the 2,000 attendance threshold din America, this is being backed by TEG so AEW doesn’t have to do all the work.
AEW: All In Texas was also not just AEW, as REV Entertainment, the Arlington Sports Commission, and the City of Arlington are considered partners in promoting the event.
It’s a different situation when you have support from the city and an entertainment promotions company to help promote your show, and that’s why AEW has confidence in these stadium shows. If they were just going this in alone I doubt they would running a stadium show at all.
I will also add that this adds a February pay per view to the All Elite Wrestling PPV schedule, ensuring we have almost every month in the calendar year covered with only June missing (due to Forbidden Door moving to August 24, 2025):
January – Wrestle Dynasty
February – Grand Slam Australia
March – Revolution
April – Dynasty
May – Double or Nothing
July – All In Texas
August – Forbidden Door London
September – All Out
October – WrestleDream
November – Full Gear
December – World’s End
