At this point, it’s not really news to report that WrestleMania generates a ton of interest and money every single year. There’s a reason that cities fight each other to get to host the biggest pro wrestling anything of the calendar year, and it usually has to do with cold, hard cash.
We already know that the five straight days of sellout events that WWE hosted in Orlando (beginning with the Hall of Fame ceremony and extending through Smackdown Live) ended up setting a bunch of attendance and gate records for Orlando and for WWE itself, but as the tallies keep being tallied, we learn more and more about what records are being broken.
For example, WWE announced in a press release on Thursday that 165,000 people attended those five straight days of sellout events, and that 1.95 million households watched WrestleMania 33 on the Network alone. The people who paid full price to watch WrestleMania 33 on traditional pay-per-view also set a record, for establishing the dumbest way to spend money for no reason.
WWE also touted that they set a bunch of social media engagement numbers, and that Network subscribers watched 22.5 million hours of programming during Mania week, or an average of 13 hours per viewer. You may feel free to make your own joke here about the run time of WrestleMania 33.
Finally, as to the all-important question of merchandise, Orlando ended up being the second-highest grossing WrestleMania for merch ever, behind last year’s installment. They moved $3.7 million worth of merchandise from Thursday to Tuesday. For comparison’s sake, the last time WrestleMania was in Orlando, they sold $2.3 million worth of merch. It is, however, worth noting that back at WrestleMania 24, the hottest item was the John Cena 8-bit shirt that looked like classic Nintendo cartridge box art.
I guess this is all just a way of saying we’ve come a long way, baby. Get your wallets and your social media platforms ready for New Orleans next year, because we’re clearly all suckers for WrestleMania, and it’s impossible to deny that.
