Perhaps half the area for more efficient flexible kites like those of SkySails. But an even greater area for flexible tether-aligned AWES.
That’s a lot of fabric, and for a short lifespan.
Death to “Soft vs rigid” could perhaps become in the same time the death of both soft (see above) and rigid (too heavy when scaling up) wings?
Maybe specific manufacturing methods (for example shapewave®), between soft and rigid, with suitable architectures, could cut the Gordian knot between efficiency and low mass when scaling up.