Featured image credit: Raphael Lovaski on Unsplash
Tony Khan, chief executive of the All Elite Wrestling promotion, has revealed that the organisation has agreed to change the set-up for its Wembley event next year so the stadium can accommodate more Taylor Swift concerts.
It was announced in August that AEW would return to Wembley on August 25 next year after a sell-out crowd of 81,035 attended its first-ever event at the venue.
The attendance marked the largest crowd ever for a professional wrestling event in Europe, and also became AEW’s highest-grossing event of all time after generating more than $10m (£7.9m/€9.1m).
Next year’s event will take place just five days after the last of eight Taylor Swift concerts at Wembley on August 20. Swift had originally been due to play six nights at Wembley, on June 21, June 22, June 23, August 15, August 16, and August 17.
Earlier this month, it was announced that she would play two more dates on August 19 and August 20. All eight shows have sold out.
Khan has now revealed that the two additional shows have been made possible after AEW agreed to speed up its installation at Wembley. “The load-in is a very different schedule than what we had last year,” he told the Daily Mail.
“If you look at the calendar of Wembley Stadium events for August of 2024, you’ll see that scheduled ahead of us is Taylor Swift and Taylor Swift being scheduled at Wembley Stadium ahead of AEW is a big deal.
“And I have some interesting stories about how all of this came to be and where we’re at. It’s very, very fun. So, when Wembley approached us about our load-in and about these Taylor Swift shows, there was an opportunity for them to add more shows and we are going to do everything we can to abbreviate our load-in time.
“So basically, they came to us and said it would help us out a lot if you could load in your show faster because we’d have the opportunity to have more Taylor Swift shows, and could you guys do that? And we said, well, it’ll be costly and very challenging, and we really would like to help you out. And so yeah, I will.”
Khan said the move would hopefully help AEW “score points” with Swift fans who are able to attend the new shows.
AEW’s inaugural event at Wembley marked its first outside of North America. It also marked the first time Wembley had staged a professional wrestling event in more than 30 years.
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