I’ll never forget my first assignment covering a live sporting event as a rookie reporter.
The regular rugby writer at the local daily newspaper where I started my career was off sick, so I was “volunteered” to cover the game.
As I’ve hinted on several podcasts for POST, I’ve got a few years on our other contributors, and this was before live streams, dedicated media facilities for close-ups and replays, or even smartphones for live text updates. We got a paper hand-out with the team line-ups 20 minutes before the match and just had to try our best from (admittedly good) seats in the stands.
This was when I knew sports reporting wasn’t for me. I was less than a year out from my postgraduate studies in newspaper journalism, and as a “cub reporter”, I was expected to be a jack of all trades: financial news, crime, politics, travel — whatever was needed by the news desk.
To date myself even further, this was before affordable digital voice recorders became commonplace. During my journalism studies, along with learning the fundamentals of good reporting and writing, media law, responsible sourcing, ethics, etc, we spent at least an hour every day learning and practicing shorthand, because that was the go-to method for scribbling down quotations at press conferences or vox pops from members of the public.
So, what does this have to do with AEW All In 2024?
Well, many years and a career change later, I found myself representing POST Wrestling at All Elite Wrestling’s biggest event of the year. Unsurprisingly, I witnessed firsthand how dramatically the in-person media landscape has evolved.
I never entirely gave up writing. I’m still a member of the UK National Union of Journalists, and my day job remains firmly within the editorial world. However, opportunities to attend and cover an event for a respected outlet have been few and far between in recent years.
I was delighted, therefore, to get the opportunity to fly the flag for POST at All In this year, which I had planned to attend in any case.
My goodness, how facilities for reporters have changed since I had to ask strangers who it was that scored for the visiting team on a cold Belfast Friday night!
Wembley Stadium has an exceptional set-up for the press. There is capacity for over 180 reporters, right above the fans in the 100 section on the north side of the venue.
Apart from a roof to keep the worst of the UK weather at bay and long tables featuring monitors and internet connectivity, the press are right in the heart of things — no glass dividers, no true sense of “otherness” from the enthusiastic fans right in front of you.
Safe in the knowledge that the great Andrew Thompson was covering the news from the event more quickly than I could and that John Pollock and Wai Ting would be analyzing the show live right after it ended, I decided to concentrate more on the live experience, talking to fans and contrasting the undeniably excellent production that I saw on the monitor screen with what my own eyes witnessed.
And part of that second element was somewhat stark. 53,000 at a wrestling event — any wrestling event — is extremely impressive, but Wembley Stadium is colossal. It is the second-largest stadium in Europe, with 90,000 fixed seats and an even larger capacity when the field is used for extra capacity. Adele topped an attendance of 98,000 people per concert for four nights in 2017.
This is all to say that in a venue of that scale, there is no hiding that 53,000 leaves big and obvious gaps. As I mentioned, the production values (although not flawless) were evident on the monitors and showcased a great look for the event, empty seats or not. However, at least four full blocks in the 100 section opposite where I sat were entirely tarped off. Keeping the “hard cam” areas somewhat free of fans for production purposes is not unusual, but this was a very big swathe of seating.
In addition, the entire area behind and to either side of the stage, usually packed with football fans behind the goal, was similarly draped in black cloth. My guesstimate is that the tarping accounted for at least 25 percent of the fixed seating.
Nevertheless, the tens of thousands in attendance were loud, fervent, humorous, knowledgeable fans of the AEW product. And they were served with one of the promotion’s best-ever shows, easily eclipsing the 2023 edition of All In.
That was where my focus wandered as my mind turned to the possibility of asking a question at the post-show press conference. There has been a pretty clear consensus that the build to this year’s marquee show for the promotion was markedly better than last year’s. Was this an indication that AEW’s creative is turning a corner? With a growing schedule of pay-per-views, is that sustainable?
In the end, I wasn’t wholly satisfied with how my question came out. In truth, there were other competing options in my mind for queries (it hadn’t escaped my notice that the attendance and gate had not been announced). However, I had a reasonable expectation that this information would be released. Perhaps it had already been tweeted out? (Another stark distinction between the immediacy of new media and returning to a newsroom to file your copy in person.)
Moreover, some imagine that you are handed a microphone and get to hang onto it — that perhaps follow-up questions are a possibility. This is not the case. The mic is taken from you and you have no right to reply or clarify. As any follower of both AEW or WWE pressers will know, it is also unusual to get in more than one question, and Tony Khan was who I wanted.
In the end, if not 100% happy with how I couched the question to Khan, I was certainly pleased with his answer. He went into great detail on the AEW creative process, and for a guy who often leans into kayfabe answers to non-kayfabe questions, I couldn’t be mad at that.
As for me, well, if we are wise, we know that we never stop learning, and although some tasks are easier in the media landscape of 2024, there is still no beating learning through getting in the reps.
