This weekend, a major talking point on social media was the number of factions in AEW. Is the number of factions in AEW a problem? In short, No.
One of the major uphill battles AEW has to face is the fact they will always be compared to WWE and their way of doing things. WWE doesn’t really like to use many factions for the longest time and at best we’ll see two factions at the same time, but they are not meant to last very long. AEW in the other hand uses factions to tell stories and book matches for the long term.
Countries like Japan and Mexico have seen of success with the idea of having different factions and this factions feuding with each other. American wrestling for the longest time has not used the idea for the longest time.
Having a lot of factions allow for all different kinds of match-ups to book until the eventual blow-off match. This also allows for wrestlers and fans to connect and fans get to choice their favorite faction to support.
One of the points brought about the idea of AEW having too many faction is the idea that the casual viewers are going to have a hard time keeping up with all the factions in AEW. If we used that same logic, Game of Thrones, a show all about families and alliances, would’ve never succeed because of the amount of families. The casual viewers are not dumb, they have google, they can find information or even better they can ask a regular fan of the product about each faction. Information is more accessible than ever.
Casual viewers don’t really exist in pro-wrestling anymore, WWE has made sure to run them away of pro-wrestling this last 20 years thanks to their monopoly over the industry. AEW changing entirely their product to satisfy a non-existent group goes against their philosophy.
This complain about AEW having to many factions comes from a certain group that are nitpicking the promotion because they can’t find other things to criticize AEW.
