TripleMania has been a signature event for AAA for over thirty years. For just the second time, the event will occur under WWE ownership. For the first time, it will be spread across two nights with the first occurring in the United States.
Reactions have been mixed, but with four months to go before the event and none of the card yet settled, there’s still a lot of room to wait and see how things will play out. Nonetheless, there’s a chance that, far from a one-off novelty, WWE is testing the waters on something with a much further-reaching impact.
Splitting Two Night Events Between Cities Could Be A Win-Win For WWE And Its Fans
WWE starting to split big events across two nights that serve different markets may well prove a savvy financial move. Selling out arenas or stadiums in two separate cities could be a money maker as fans can logically justify shelling out more on tickets and merchandise for one night than for back-to-back events.
A similar principle could apply to crowd fatigue, with the audience for each night a little more electric for its only chance to cheer that weekend. Additionally, hosting two nights in two separate spots for major shows could open the possibility of testing out lower profile markets without fully committing to them. Think Minneapolis or Indianapolis getting a night of WrestleMania.
On the topic of smaller markets getting a crack at major shows, fans could win out for more cities getting more major, historic events if WWE were to start making moves like this on a regular basis. Finally, such a set up also opens international opportunities like having one night in London while still having the other domestically.
The Limitations Of Splitting Events Between Cities
There are, naturally, limitations to splitting big wrestling events between cities. First and foremost, there’s the matter of personnel. From executives like Triple H, to camera crews and technicians, to the wrestlers themselves, it’s hard to reliably get from one city to another on back-to-back nights. Indeed, TripleMania occurring on Friday and Sunday nights may account for providing a travel day in between.
Having a day between nights of TripleMania feels like a different proposition than doing so for WrestleMania or SummerSlam. However, for events like the Royal Rumble or Money in the Bank, which could entail putting a full day in between their eponymous gimmick match iterations, it may well work to give each signature bout some room to breathe and not feel redundant.
Moreover, if events are held in similar enough regions—say in Las Vegas and Los Angeles or in Atlanta and Orlando, the distances may be surmountable for key WWE personnel and even for die-hard fans who really want to make it to both nights.
WWE May Have Found An Answer To Riyadh WrestleMania Naysayers
In 2027, WrestleMania is set to emanate from Saudi Arabia for the very first time. There has understandably been backlash from fans for the difficulty of getting into that country and the less than sterling record of events to have emanated from it, not to mention challenges like women having to cover their bodies to perform there.
WWE has not yet announced precise WrestleMania 43 dates. It may be a stretch, but could it be that WWE will run one night of WrestleMania—perhaps even WrestleMania Sunday—in Riyadh, but the other night from a different venue, perhaps domestically, or perhaps from one of the European locations where the crowds have been electric for live wrestling in recent years.
A lot will probably come down to what WWE can and is willing to do relative to its contractual arrangements with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. If the company did want to split cities for a ‘Mania again, though–for the first time since WrestleMania 2, forty-one years prior–this would seem like a prime time for them to try to have their cake and eat it too, collecting Saudi money while still serving a more vocal fanbase from somewhere else in the world. What WWE does with TripleMania and how fans receive it may signal what’s to come in that regard.
Ultimately, TripleMania’s two-night, split-city format comes across as an experiment and it’s difficult for anyone from the outside looking in to guess at all this choice’s implications or what WWE has in mind. Nonetheless, with a new approach to booking a brand’s flagship event in place, the future may get very interesting for some of WWE’s own longest standing PLEs.