The WWE's Paul “Triple H” Levesque (l) and Nick Khan touched on the future of WrestleMania locations
Coming off the most successful and highest-grossing WrestleMania, WWE officials are finding booming interest in hosting the company’s premium live events.
As potential host cities bid for future WrestleManias, Chief Content Officer
Paul “Triple H” Levesque said yesterday at the CAA World Congress of Sports that the economic impact to the host city is a draw in the bidding process, which gives WWE “a list of folks” that it can “sort of pick and choose” from to find the best venue.
WrestleMania XL at Lincoln Financial Field in early April was the last site that WWE’s current management team inherited from more than four years ago agreed to by their predecessors.
The first night of the two-night event was held in frigid temperatures, but didn’t deter more than 70,000 fans from attending.
WWE President
Nick Khan noted that for future WrestleManias, they will look to shift their tactics.
“Going in early April at an outdoor stadium (on the East Coast) ... assume you're not going to see that again,” Khan said. “Going up against the Final Four Saturday night games, assume you're not going to see that again.”
The site for next year’s WrestleMania is expected to be formally announced next month.
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While WWE has not revealed ticket sales for WrestleMania, Khan was asked by SBJ Publisher & Executive Editor Abe Madkour about a total for the two nights in Philly. When Madkour suggested $38M, Khan said, “Listen, that number has not been reported, but I would not dispute that number.”
WWE also is continuing to prepare for the move of “Raw” to Netflix in January after agreeing to
a 10-year, $5B deal. Levesque said the arrangement will be “game-changing” for WWE and viewers. He expressed no concern that WWE fans won’t follow Raw to the streaming platform.
“That's where the world's going,” said Levesque. “It's easy for our fan base. We have a long history of changing locations and a massive amount of our people, like 95% of our audience just completely comes with us. I think this will be no different.”
Khan said the Netflix deal and the company’s NBCUniversal deal to move “SmackDown” to USA Network “couldn't be more significant for us.”
