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The viewership for this year’s annual two-night WWE WrestleMania was up 41% across Night 1 and Night 2, compared with last year’s audience. That viewership was driven by the culmination of a multi-year storyline around Cody Rhodes going after Roman Reigns’ world title, and also featured a match Saturday with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Johnson joined the board of WWE parent company TKO Group at the beginning of the year, taking a $30 million payday for the new role, which has also included TV appearances throughout the first quarter.
WrestleMania XL, which took place in Philadelphia, also continued strong numbers on social media, earning 660 million views over the two days of the event for the plethora of content made available there. The brand’s YouTube channel similarly had its most-viewed day in its history on Sunday with 67 million views over 24 hours.
WWE has grown its viewership on YouTube and other social platforms in a variety of ways, including offering more livestreams leading into this year’s event, capitalizing on the trend of long streams meant to be utilized as background viewing with content like best-of match compilations. This year’s WrestleMania week included WWE’s regular “Raw,” “SmackDown” and “NXT” shows, as well as its new WWE Speed show which streams on X, the annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony, two nights of WrestleMania and countdown shows for each night, the WWE Slammy awards and the NXT Stand & Deliver premium event, along with WWE in-house talk show “The Bump.”
Breaking from longstanding company tradition, the WWE also featured additional sponsorships during its shows. That included the WrestleMania mat itself having sponsor logos for the first time, with Logan Paul’s Prime energy drink featured across the WWE ring in all premium events going forward. They’ve also added individual matches being sponsored, as well as ads displayed on the ring posts and elsewhere.
The company saw promising numbers elsewhere as the product continues a hot streak, including breaking live ticket sales numbers with this year’s gross up 78%. The shows averaged 72,649 attendees each night, including both paid and comped attendance. Last year’s event was held in Los Angeles across two nights at SoFi Stadium and came the same weekend that WWE’s merger with UFC under Endeavor was announced.
Ticket sales were hot not just for WrestleMania, which saw high demand on the secondary market, but for “SmackDown,” “Raw” and “NXT Stand & Deliver.” The first two set gate records, with the price to get in for further seats still kept down in initial ticket sales but premium spots continuing to rise in cost. Meanwhile, the NXT event was the brand’s most-attended show to date with 16,545 attendees.
The high level of interest was reflected in “SmackDown” ratings for this past week with 2.6 million viewers, including 1 million in the key 18-49 demographic. That first number is the SmackDown brand’s highest since December 2022, with the 18-49 number the highest since December 2020.
As the company continues an international push, this year’s WrestleMania drew fans from every state as well as 64 countries. Of its eight premium events scheduled through August, six of them take place in other countries. That includes five of six WWE-branded events and one of two NXT-branded shows.
The company also celebrated its merchandise sales, up 20% from last year. Other auxiliary events this year included the company’s WWE World fan event, which is now both the most-attended and highest-grossing fan event in its history. However, it lasted for more days than previous fan events.
