Add as a preferred source on Google This year’s WWE SummerSlam is struggling to fill U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, even with two nights scheduled for August 1 and August 2. This will be the first time the company has held a stadium show in the city.
According to the latest WrestleTix update, 22,780 tickets have been distributed for the first night and 22,364 for the second. Over the past week, those numbers grew by just 711 and 633, respectively. There are more than 72,000 seats on the sales map, with the cheapest tickets going for $76.
On a recent episode of The Phenomenally Retro Podcast, AJ Styles discussed the premium live event’s commercial performance and questioned what WWE’s real expectations might be for the two nights.
“Well, it doesn’t sound like they’re doing very well. But it is 20,000 people. That is a lot as well, to have a two-day event where 20,000 people are coming. But again, it is not a sellout. So is this being successful? I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure they’re going to make money on this regardless, or they wouldn’t be doing it or is it something that they’re trying out and go, ‘Okay, we can run an arena.’ The fact that the arenas usually only go for about what, 12,000, 14,000, something around in there, so they’re still able to fit more people in the stadium. So they are doing better than an arena show. But what do you want to get out of it? Is it one of those things where perception is reality, and we want that to be the case here. Or is it all about, which I know the answer to this, the money and having a two-day event where it’s not sold out, but there are 20,000 people there each day, and they’ll probably pick up at least another 5,000 to 10,000 that’s my guess.”
Styles was then asked about the possible reasons for the weak demand and pointed to ticket prices as a possible cause.
“Well, I don’t know how much the tickets are, but they haven’t been known to be cheap. It’s not one of those things where even the nosebleeds are a little expensive. So I think that might have something to do with it. I could be wrong. I would think that big shows like this, you definitely have your tiers of where you’re going to sit and how much they are. But I would say, when you get the nosebleeds, let’s make them freaking cheap, dirt cheap. Sell a bunch of those. Why not? Let’s sell all these seats we can and maybe that’s something as we get closer that’ll happen. Who knows? I mean, it’s only two weeks away. I don’t know, man. I don’t know. Maybe this is a run to see how, you know, it’s not WrestleMania so let’s see how SummerSlam is going to, if SummerSlam is successful, that means we make the other two big pay-per-views to two-day events. So I don’t know how this is going to work out. I don’t know if it’s just a trial run or something like that. I’m a big fan of one-day kind of stuff. But then again, WrestleMania seems to do okay and SummerSlam being two days, we’re going to find out.”
The Phenomenal One’s assessment lines up with what had already been discussed backstage. Even before that update, WWE rolled out a 25 percent discount on July 1. Still, Dave Meltzer reported that the discount didn’t lead to any significant change in sales.
The comparison with 2025 makes the situation look even more concerning. Last year’s SummerSlam drew 50,493 fans on Saturday and 58,186 on Sunday, while this year’s event remains below 23,000 tickets distributed per night with just over two weeks to go.