During the pandemic, pro wrestling didn’t stop — at least not on television. But it did happen in front of a lot fewer people.
WWE tried a few things, moving Raw, SmackDown, and their premium live events around a few times as they eventually settled on using an arena full of screens displaying fans watching the show from home. AEW spent the first month in Georgia, then set-up shop in Florida at Daily’s Place, adjacent to the stadium where the Khan family’s NFL franchise, the Jacksonville Jaguars,
play football (EverBank Stadium, which is also AEW’s official headquarters), an open-air venue they could put as many socially distanced fans in as Ron DeSantis would allow.
AEW still returns to Daily’s Place. Tony Khan’s promotion was just there in October for “Title Tuesday” and “Homecoming” editions of Dynamite and Collision. But they’ll need a new “home field” until 2028, and maybe longer.
That’s because the venue is closing next week, and not expected to re-open for at least two years. It’s part of the Khan family’s “Stadium of the Future” project, which will connect Daily’s Place to EverBank Stadium. The City of Jacksonville owns the venues, but Shad Khan’s Bold Events runs them. The Stadium itself will shut down in 2027 as part of the project; the Jags are set to place that season in Orlando at Camping World Stadium, site of WrestleMania 33.
We’ll see if TK and AEW pick a temporary home base for themselves over the next couple of years.
