The rumors are true: WrestleMania 43 is heading to Saudi Arabia in 2027. But at what price tag?
Naturally, Friday’s hastily assembled announcement in Las Vegas — in which WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque spoke alongside his “dear friend” Turki Alalshikh, as well as WWE luminaries like The Undertaker — didn’t reveal how much Saudi Arabia will be paying for the privilege. But we can only guess that it will be enormous.
Advertisement
Saudi Arabia already pays $50 million to host events like Crown Jewel. But hosting WrestleMania? That’s a whole other ballgame. Particularly when WWE can reliably make $40 million by running its biggest show in Las Vegas, without any of the PR risks that come with a Saudi show.
Presumably, Turki can easily outbid Vegas. But then there’s the metaphorical price tag — the burning question as to whether WWE has now fully sold out to a Middle Eastern nation run by an autocratic monarchy with a pitiful human rights record.
That seemed to be the view of the 80,000 or so fans watching Friday’s special announcement on YouTube, who bombarded the comments section with the usual accusations about the WWE selling out by taking masses of Saudi cash.
Ordinarily, I’d push back on that, pointing out that, for all their marketing spiel, WWE has been a genuine force for change in a country that has come a long way in 10 years (albeit from a very, very low baseline). But while all that is still true, I can’t shake the fact that is WrestleMania we’re talking about.
Advertisement
Taking your biggest event of the year — the wrestling equivalent of the Super Bowl — outside of North America for the first time, purely because another country is prepared to pay over the odds in order to be the center of the entertainment universe for the weekend? That’s a huge statement from WWE parent company TKO.
We saw from the WrestleMania 42 farrago — the event was announced as heading to New Orleans before Las Vegas swept in with a better bid — that WWE has become brutally commercial with these big tentpoles. But this goes even further.
(On that note, should we feel sorry for Indianapolis, who signed a massive deal with TKO last year to become WWE’s top-tier events partner, hosting the Royal Rumble, SummerSlam and WrestleMania in the near future? Presumably, IndyMania won’t happen until 2028 at the earliest.)
Advertisement
What will the Saudis want for their money? Already there is speculation that we might finally get The Rock vs. Roman Reigns. If it’s ever going to happen, this has to be the most likely event. With that kind of money, the Saudis could probably bring both John Cena and The Undertaker out of retirement too.
There are also practical questions about taking such a big event to Saudi. Having been to Saudi shows, I know that WWE doesn’t struggle to pull in a 20,000-strong crowd of largely local fans for events like Crown Jewel. But can they really put on a stadium show to rival Las Vegas and Los Angeles?
There was a very strong suggestion in Friday’s press conference that Saudi wants this event to drive tourism to the kingdom, presumably by persuading Americans and other Westerners to make the trip over to the Gulf to attend WrestleMania. But that will be no easy task, for a whole host of reasons.
WWE’s partnership with Saudi Arabia dates back to 2018.
(FAYEZ NURELDINE via Getty Images)
Either way, it’s clear that Triple H and Nick Khan really are all in on this Saudi partnership — something that perhaps should have been clear when we learned earlier this year that the Royal Rumble was heading to Riyadh too.
Advertisement
The next step will likely be the announcement of the WWE’s new partnership with Saudi Arabia, given the current one expires in 2027. That should be when we find out how much the country is paying for WrestleMania 43. Based on what we know, it will almost certainly be more than $100 million. Could it be $200 million? Maybe even $300 million?
That’s a lot of money — but not without a heck of a lot of risk attached. Add in the ongoing questions around Saudi Arabia and Zuffa Boxing, and you can see just how dependent TKO could end up becoming on Turki Alalshikh and his friends in Riyadh.
Based on the reaction from the fans on YouTube, WWE will need to be ready to counter the accusation that it is indeed “selling out.” For a start, they’d better have enough similarly big events in the tank to ensure that the American fans don’t feel their product has been stolen from them.
We’ll see over the next two or three years how it all plays out. Until then, Levesque’s catchphrase for these occasions will be more relevant than ever: “Are … you …. ready?”
For the sake of TKO’s future, you’d better hope they all are.
