(No) Money In The Bank
Is The Average Fan Being Priced Out of Professional Wrestling?
Watching the 2025 WWE Royal Rumble this past weekend was a reminder of why I was a wrestling fan. Trust me, I’m not the kind of guy that needs reminding, but after an evening of pizza and beer with a friend, it was a great way to “reset” just in time for WrestleMania, the “high season” of not only WWE calendar but wrestling in general. I’m attending this year’s ‘Mania and while there was a year or so where I got to cover these events as press, being a part of this new wrestling revolution is not for the faint (wallets) of heart. As a wrestling enthusiast, I bet I’d put more effort into attending these events, but I wonder about the average Joes and families who may be a bit more discerning when it comes time to pay for tickets.
WrestleMania 41, the biggest event of the year is emanating from Las Vegas this Easter Weekend. Typically this is late on the wrestling calendar, but the City of Las Vegas agreed to pay the $5 million site fee if the WWE could set up shop on the typically slow Easter Weekend. With more and more WWE events happening internationally to flesh out their international brand strategy, this means there are fewer major events on American soil and that comes at a price.
As shown, on February 4th, “get-in prices” for the two-day event start at about $1,000. One. Thousand.
And because it’s a two-day event, you’re going to have to figure out housing on top of that. Lord help you if you’re with a kid or you are sentimental because I’m not even mentioning merchandise or specialty food/drinks that for sure are going to be limited edition items. Now, I understand it is 2025 and things cost a whole lot more than they ever did. People are out on the Internet tracking the price of eggs, but this is ridiculous. Formula 1, a “premium sport” (in so far that it is a competition and seen as a product that would cost more than the average American team sport), had grandstand packages in the same city starting at $795.
As a man of a certain age, I’m happy that the WWE is having the glow-up that it’s experiencing now. It feels like that uncle who used to sell CDs and women’s makeup out the back of his car, finally got the seed money to open the store of his dreams. But overnight that store got a velvet rope and said “Sorry, only the finest patrons of ‘Roger’s Tunes and Skin Tones’ may enter. Having the events be ‘bigger and better’ is going to encourage more international fans to pay that premium, (i.e. sports tourism) but it does feel harder for regular fans to buy in.
This is also led to the really weird rise of fans starting podcasts with the hopes of going to the events for free as “press.” I want to write an article about this, but I for one do not want to come across as a hater. Get in where you fit in, kids.
But who is a “regular fan” anyway?
Again, I’m torn. I’ve been broke as a joke for as long back as I can remember, but wrestling as always been a part of my life. And the reason why is that wrestling (comparatively) was cheap entertainment for very much a part of its history. It’s cheaper to run a sport on a TV network than a drama and pro wrestling could NEVER command the fees MLB or the NFL would. Tickets to see wrestling live were a bargain as well, as $75 got me on the floor of Wrestlemania 26 back in the day. Lord, I sound like Grandpa Simpson:
The success of events like WrestleMania, or SummerSlam, or…”Crown Jewel” is a net positive. Entertainment is going through a lot right now, and far be it from me to shame the one flavor that’s actually growing these days. But as modern wrestling shifts and now doesn’t quite look like the kind of wrestling I grew up with (95% for the better, I’d say), I kind of wish there was a lower entry point for fans to experience the art form.
“Go to an indie show,” I can hear most people say. And while that’s true and you should support independent wrestling the best way you can, that has two issues of its own. For one, tickets are climbing in price over there too and secondly, casual and newer fans want to see the exact product presented to them first. If I become a fan of say, the Los Angeles Lakers because they just acquired Luka Dončić in a wonky ass trade, I would want to see the Lakers live FIRST before exploring other teams. I came across NRL Rugby during the pandemic, I made sure that I saw the Sydney Roosters play in Vegas first. Back to Formula 1, I became a fan of that sport because of the Netflix show Drive to Survive. Sure, there’s local racing near me, but best believe I wanted to see “thee Formula 1” up close first.
And if you’re wondering, I borrowed the money from a friend and paid him back over time. Maybe that’s it. All current wrestling fans should just have a thousand-dollar war chest for the sole purpose of helping new fans see the spectacle that is all about piledrivers and pyro!