Biggest thing to keep in mind is that AEW has had a shit TV deal in the UK.
ITV is the second biggest UK network and the best one to work with since BBC will never show foreign wrestling, but they have 4 channels and AEW was on the 4th one (least visible) in a graveyard slot at 1am days late.
Recently they moved it much earlier on ITV4 which helped, and I think I saw it late on ITV1 once. But what they really need is a next day showing at 9pm on ITV2 which isn't unreasonable given that it's usually wall to wall Family Guy reruns.
If they do this event, it needs to be live on ITV1 and used to relaunch AEW in the UK.
ITV is free though, WWE occasionally has highlights on Channel 5 (4th largest network) but is mostly on our version of cable. So AEW has higher viewership than WWE but whenever I mention wrestling at school, the kids say Roman Reigns or John Cena.
Elementary school kids skew towards WWE pretty universally. AEW's demographics are the 16-40 male crowd primarily, though they're starting to finally make progress with the female demographics as well.
WWE vs AEW on demographics is very similar to WCW vs WWF back in the day. WCW had a lot of young fans (Sting, Goldberg, DDP) and a lot of older fans who were longtime viewers and enjoyed the more traditional aspects (themes of respect, Ric Flair, Hogan, Steiners, etc). Meanwhile WWF gained a lock on the teenagers and young adults with beer and middle fingers, and pulled to a massive lead in the 14-30 or so demographic for both sexes. Then that expanded to permeate more demos as they gained word of mouth, TV Guide covers, etc.
And yes, AEW has more TV viewers than WWE in the UK but I'm well aware of why that is.
Internally AEW is hoping for 80k at Wembley (which is basically maximum when accounting for stage and production) but they'll consider anything over 40k a success.
One major milestone to keep in mind is that as of right now, the largest non-WWE wrestling crowd in history (that actually counted, so no North Korea shows) was 39k at the Georgia Dome for Goldberg vs Hogan in 1998.
So if AEW can pass 39k, they'll surpass WCW as having the highest-attended wrestling show ever outside of WWE, and that's the feather in the cap that they want.
The Georgia Dome had a capacity of around 80k for concerts, which meant probably around 65k for wrestling, and they managed to get it around two-thirds full at the height of the company's popularity. Goldberg vs Hogan was a big draw. AEW doesn't have that, so they're reliant on "first AEW show in Europe" as the big draw. I think they're gonna need more than that, and will need to come up with some pretty compelling feuds heading into it. They already have one ready-made if one half of it will play ball.
I'll probably be there in some capacity, we'll see if it works out.
