By: Lucas Delgado
April 24, 2024
Photo Credit: WWE/Getty Images
Earlier this month, the professional wrestling world descended upon Philadelphia for a week of intrigue and spectacle. WrestleMania, the industry’s biggest annual event hosted by the industry’s biggest promoters, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), took place for the 40th time. On the surface, it seemed to be comparable to any other large-scale show that the WWE has run in its 45 year history - a blend of sports and entertainment by mixing engaging storylines with predetermined athletic competition, where lovable heroes battle sinister villains in pursuit of pride and championship gold. However, this year’s WrestleMania Weekend was one that the company has championed as the biggest spectacle in its history. In fact, former WWE wrestler (and current Chief Creative Officer) Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque remarked that it, “was legitimately, [by] every metric, the biggest WrestleMania of all time.” Although this may seem like a generic claim for a company official to make, according to several key business statistics, he’s absolutely right.
WrestleMania itself - split across Saturday, April 6 and Sunday, April 7 at Lincoln Financial Field, home of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles - shattered the company’s all-time attendance record, with 145,298 attendees in total. Compared to last year’s event, this year posted a 78 percent increase in attendance and saw a 41 percent increase in television viewership. These impressive figures were supplemented by more success in the events surrounding WWE’s biggest show. The company ran three shows from the Wells Fargo Center across the weekend - Friday Night Smackdown’s Hall of Fame special, NXT’s Stand and Deliver premium event, and Monday Night Raw - with all three setting individual attendance records when the dust had settled. Another mainstay of the weekend was the WWE World attraction at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, which aided the company’s merchandise sales, seeing a year-over-year increase of about 20 percent. Finally, it was also a massive weekend for the social media and publicity spaces, as the WWE skillfully used celebrity integration to promote WrestleMania. Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Drew Barrymore, Jason Kelce, Meek Mill, IShowSpeed, and several others made cameos throughout the show, while wrestler turned Hollywood actor Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and influencer Logan Paul both had marquee matches of their own. Johnson teamed up with cousin Roman Reigns against Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins, and Paul defended his United States Championship in a triple threat match against Randy Orton and Kevin Owens. The star factor paid dividends online, as the company racked up 660 million views across social channels over the weekend, including 67 million YouTube views (yet another WWE record) on Sunday alone.
The past calendar year was one of highs and lows for WWE. The company saw vast success in its plans to continue expanding internationally by holding Premium Live Events (PLEs) in Canada, Puerto Rico, England and Australia. They also continued to deliver on their deal to host PLEs in Saudi Arabia each year. They also made waves by merging with the UFC under the newly formed TKO Group (operated by William Morris Endeavor). However, the company also had to struggle through the negative publicity caused by WWE Founder and Former President Vince McMahon, who was sued for failing to meet settlement payments in a lawsuit related to trafficking and abuse. This scandal has remained in the public eye due to McMahon’s longstanding influence over WWE’s product.
With all of these factors at play, the WWE was definitely looking to deliver a WrestleMania for the ages this year. The verdict? That’s exactly what they did.