In a year of big news for AEW, including the weekly Saturday night show Collision, announcing Wembley Stadium as the venue for All In topped everything. Over 65,000 tickets have been sold for this ambitious show in the spirit of the first All In from 2018, a self-promoted event that sold over 10,000 seats.
Outside AEW, CEO and GM Tony Khan has other responsibilities, including assisting his father Shad’s soccer club, Fulham FC, who play at Craven Cottage in London. Surprisingly, he did not choose this venue for All In.
In an interview with TalkWrestling, Khan said he chose Wembley Stadium due to superior logistics to Craven Cottage for hosting the event, and the ability to sell more tickets at the former (h/t Fightful for transcription).
“Those are two of my favorite places in the world. Craven Cottage is literally a home to me. I would love to do any big event in Craven Cottage. Wembley offered several things that we just couldn’t possibly do at the Cottage. In this case, the load in, logistically at Craven Cottage was going to be pretty much impossible. It would have been really hard to make it a big scale event there based on how challenging it would be load set, the ring, and all the elements for a big wrestling show into Craven Cottage. The Cottage was built in 1879. We’ve done a lot of renovation, to say the least, on the riverside in recent years, but Wembley offered us a less challenging load in, and also the ability to sell many times more tickets. We’ve already sold twice as many tickets as we could have sold at Craven Cottage. I really wish that would have come off, but Wembley is also one of my favorite places in the world. This is, to be honest, my first choice of where to do the show, at Wembley Stadium,” he said.
Ultimately, it’s about making money. Craven Cottage holds about 25,000 people while Wembley Stadium can nearly quadruple that, and with the continuing success of ticket sales, it seems Khan chose wisely.