WrestleMania XL was an unqualified success for WWE.
Cody Rhodes defeated Roman Reigns in the Main Event of Night 2. That capped off a storyline that dated back to January 2023, when Rhodes won the Royal Rumble and the right to challenge Reigns at WrestleMania 39 that year. While Rhodes controversially failed in that attempt, waiting a year to pay it off proved well worth it for WWE.
Jimmy Traina of Sports Illustrated detailed the success of the event.
“The company says that viewership on Peacock for Nights 1 and 2 of WrestleMania 40, which took place at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field, was up 41% from WrestleMania 39, which had set a viewership record,” Traina wrote.
“The WWE’s YouTube channel saw its most-viewed day in channel history on Sunday with more than 67 million views in 24 hours,” he added. “WrestleMania 40 became the most socially viewed WrestleMania of all-time, with more than 660 million views consumed over the two days.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, the two days also set an attendance record.
“WrestleMania 40 broke the previous attendance record set by WrestleMania 39 by 78 percent, with 145,298 fans filling Lincoln Financial Stadium over the two nights.”
Of course, the main event was not simply Rhodes vs. Reigns. Saturday’s main event was a tag match pitting Rhodes and Seth Rollins against Reigns and The Rock. The latter team’s victory all but guaranteed that The Rock would play a part in Sunday’s main event. It also essentially ensured that other legends would appear on Rhodes’ behalf. That happened with both John Cena and The Undertaker.
The success of WrestleMania on Saturday and Sunday continued into RAW on Monday.
#WWERaw did monster numbers last night for the post-WrestleMania episode, despite opposing the NCAA Men's Championship game that averaged 14.82M viewers.
RAW averaged 2.361M viewers (+32% from last week) with a 0.83 P18-49 rating (+41%), per PWTorch.
It was the best audience… pic.twitter.com/pFX8JvUTe8
— Raj Giri (@TheRajGiri) April 9, 2024
The peak viewership for #WWERAW last night was the segment between Cody Rhodes & The Rock with about 3,200,000 viewers & 1.10 [1,447,000] in P18-49.
Highest quarter hour for a WWE TV segment in years.
(wrestlenomics) pic.twitter.com/RArSnDKbbC
— Wrestle Ops (@WrestleOps) April 10, 2024
The first WrestleMania of WWE’s “Paul Levesque era” couldn’t have gone much better for the company.
[SI.com]
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