How about Wrestlemania 30 in 2 Locations?!

[rge2010]

Ok, I see threads pop up every so often about holding a major PPV outside of USA and Canada. The UK is often cited but due to bad weather, not enough stadiums with roofs and timing issues with the American audience it is seen as non starter.

But what if Wrestlemania 30 was held in 2 different locations? Lets say Maddison Square Garden which holds 19,000 and The O2 Arena London which holds around 14,000 for WWE PPV's making a joint attendance of 34,000. I just think this would make things so much more interesting and give this special event that 'extra magnitude'.

Timings

Now I am fully aware there is a time difference of 5 hours so here is how I would schedule it.

WM30 - 02 Arena
London - 7pm - 9pm
New York - 2pm - 4pm

WM30 - Maddison Square Garden
New York - 7pm - 9pm
London - 12am - 2am

PPV Buys

Each location PPV lasts 2 hours, totalling 4 hours worth of action which is the 'norm'. There is a 3 hour 'intermission' between the 2 events but this delay also allows the USA to catch up in terms of time, making it the normal 7pm starting time for the USA event. This is to allow the London fans time to return home and catch the 2nd part of the PPV. Hell, the O2 Arena could even screen it for them if they wish to stay, although travel back at 2am might be an issue.

So what about the TV Audiences then? Well they are recieving a 7 hour Wrestling extravaganza, so instead of the £15 the UK charges, they charge £25 for this special event. I am not sure how much the rest of the world pays for PPV's but WWE could add a mark up of 33% to cover the extra costs. This is Wrestlemania 30 after all so that in itself makes it special and a draw!!! There would be no spoilers, nobody put off by buying this PPV because you pay once and recieve it all! As for the broadcasters, well here in the UK we have a dedicated Channel called Sky Box Office which broadcasts WWE PPV's. There is no 'watershed' on these events because it is bought via a pin number from the Sky Subscriber who must be over the age of 18.

So what happens after the 2 hour event finishes in London? Well there is 3 hours to fill so how about showing the Hall Of Fame Ceremony from the previous evening in this PPV Broadcast. That would kill 2 hours. They could then a show a 'Wrestlemania Special' with interviews and stars of the past telling stories about their favourite Wrestlemania moments. Ok, has being done before but you get the jist? Hell, they could even show the video packages leading up to the fights at the New York part of the PPV! This will give talent more in-ring time and allow more matches when the live broadcast starts.

7 Hours may be overkill, but you can look at it 2 ways. 2 seperate 2 hour events with a 3 hour cooling off period or 7 hours of Wrestling fun. Once a person has bought this PPV, WWE don't really care who watches it second by second. And in an age where we can record live TV, it is entirely upto you when you view the product. Lets remember, the event is on a Sunday aswell.

Talent

Given the event is 3 years away I can only go on the current rosters. This will change enormously, but I like to think the majority of the main event and mid card will still be emplyed by WWE. We have seen a mini influx of British/Irish/European talent in the last few years so naturally you would have these at the London part of the PPV. I would hazzard a guess that Wade Barrett and Sheamus will be strong players within WWE even more so than now, and up and comers like Drew McIntyre and Mason Ryan may also have a say. Throw in Santino, Kozlov, David Hart Smith for extra effect. Still, the card looks pretty weak but some of the old skool, who wouldnt be missed (too much) in New York like Chris Jericho, Kane and Big Show would be suffice. And then maybe a major player like Triple H and The Miz. Add 1 or 2 mid card like R-Truth and Kofi Kingston and you have a decent 2 hour event. Triple H could run production of the London show with Vince over in New York.

So who does that leave to strut their stuff in New York? John Cena, Randy Orton, CM Punk, Undertaker, Edge, Rey Mysterio, Alberto Del Rio, Jack Swagger, Sin Cara among others. You could easily make a 2 hour PPV with all that talent. Remember, this is all hyperthetically and a clear indication 6 months before the event but would better but work with me!

The Card

To guess the match ups would be ludicrous, but an example (if the event was a few months away) would explain things better. We also have 2 Major Titles and plenty of mid card titles to share between the 2 events so here is an example card.

• Wrestlemania 30 - London, O2 Arena.

World Heaveyweight Title - Wade Barrett vs Sheamus vs Mason Ryan vs Drew McIntyre
Triple H vs The Miz
Retirement Match - William Regal vs Chris Jericho
Tag Titles - Big Show/Kane (c) vs David Hart Smith/Tyson Kidd vs Santino/Kozlov vs R-Truth/Kofi Kingston
Divas Number 1 Contender - Natayla vs Eve vs Melina vs Michelle McCool vs Layla vs Gail Kim

• Wrestlemania 30 - New York, Maddison Square Garden

Streak Match - The Undertaker vs John Cena
WWE Title Match - Randy Orton (c) vs Edge
US Title - Sin Cara (c) vs Alberto Del Rio
Christian vs CM Punk
MITB Ladder Match - Rey Mysterio vs John Morrison vs Daniel Bryan vs Cody Rhodes vs Jack Swagger vs Justin Gabriel vs Dolph Ziggler vs Evan Bourne
Divas Title - Beth Phoenix vs Awesome Kong

The New York 'leg' of the PPV looks much stronger but I feel it has to be. The American audience is the bread and butter of WWE so you need to appease them first!

So what are your thoughts on this idea? Is it feasible? Will it work? Have WWE got enough talent to sell out 2 seperate shows!?

 

[hollowpoint]

I applaud your efforts and this seems to be a well thought out plan, but I don't see it happning. I doubt they will use WM as the first time they go overseas for a PPV. Also, there isn't enough talent on the roster, much less main event talent to pull off such an event. I think it's a lock that WM30 is gonna be all about NY, just like the first, 10th, and 20th WM went. It's hard enough to figure out what the card is gonna be for this year's SS much less WM30.

 

[The Suplexer Perfecter]

11 matches when WM 27 had 8 matches when they cut off sheamus/bryan. And 7 hours is ridiculous, sorry.

You also just shove guys in big matches which would need a ton of time. You seriously put like EVERYONE on the card which isn't possible without giving 20 to 30 minutes for a good match.

I also wouldn't do that since it's overseas. It's insane to try and do that and I doubt Vince would spend the money.

 

[neildittmar]

It's hard enough to figure out what the card is gonna be for this year's SS much less WM30.

Exactly. If you want to see a working "experiment" of why splitting WM between multiple venues won't work, take in a viewing of Wrestlemania 2. That show was essentially a train wreck from start to finish. Unbalanced cards full of filler-level matches, many of which weren't Saturday Nights Main Event worthy, let alone WM worthy. Then there was the "celebrities" in attendance for each segment of the event. Lets just say that Vince and Co. were having problems getting enough C-listers to fill the spots... so they resorted to has-beens and in some cases, never weres. If you thought the past few Wrestlemanias were bad in that department...

Granted, with the brand extension this makes the OP's idea a little more feasible. However, unlike in a single venue scenario you're relying on both brands to have equally strong talent to carry a PPV level show on their respective own. This idea has also been tried and resulted in lackluster events with way too much filler and not nearly enough "killer"... very much akin to the aforementioned WM2.

While the idea is well thought out and detailed, it also relies way too much on things going absolutely perfect. Cena vs. Undertaker could headline any show right now, including Wrestlemania. What happens if one of them (namely Taker) gets injured and can't compete? Nearly the entire draw for the MSG show goes downhill. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I don't think any of those other matches you listed could carry the show. That's problem 1. Problem 2 is who do you replace an injured guy with? Your other ME level talent is on the "other" show, thousands of miles away. You could pull from show 2 to beef up show 1, but then you're shortchanging show 2. See the problem?

 

[rge2010]

11 matches when WM 27 had 8 matches when they cut off sheamus/bryan. And 7 hours is ridiculous, sorry.

You also just shove guys in big matches which would need a ton of time. You seriously put like EVERYONE on the card which isn't possible without giving 20 to 30 minutes for a good match.

I also wouldn't do that since it's overseas. It's insane to try and do that and I doubt Vince would spend the money.

No guest host, water down the stupid backstage vignettes and air all the build ups in the intermission. Wrestlemanias from years gone by ahve had 10/11 matches.

Also, its a 4 hour PPV, not 7 hours, there is 3 hours intermission which allows for HOF to be aired.

 

[EEPunk]

Has Wrestlemania 2 taught you nothing? Airing a Mania from more than one venue at a time is NOT a good idea. Not to mention, Creative can't build half the guys they have now, how could they possibly build enough stars and feuds for this to happen?

And, FWIW, this wouldn't be the first time PPV has been done overseas. Summerslam was held in Wembley Arena, with one of the headliners being Bret vs Bulldog for the IC title.

 

[ncb619]

I do like your thinking...

I don't know why people go "ah rah rah rah English weather, we need an indoor arena" because Wembley Stadium now has a retractable roof....

Being WrestleMania 30 though, some sort of massive 7 hour thing could work though, PPV only doco segments sort of thing, or the HOF ceremony like suggested earlier

 

[Piss Bucket]

As much as I would love to attend Wrestlemania in London, I'm going to RAW at the O2 on the 18th of April this year, I don't think it will happen, the Yanks would bitch about the weather, and the time difference etc.

 

[The Suplexer Perfecter]

No guest host, water down the stupid backstage vignettes and air all the build ups in the intermission. Wrestlemanias from years gone by ahve had 10/11 matches.

Also, its a 4 hour PPV, not 7 hours, there is 3 hours intermission which allows for HOF to be aired.

I'm being realistic. WWE always has backstage segments.

Wrestlemanias in the past with that amount of matches barely had any time. Look at Mania 20.

So what about the TV Audiences then? Well they are recieving a 7 hour Wrestling extravaganza,

YOU mentioned it as 7 hours with that intermission. That's way too long.

 

[ThAwRe$tLiNgGaWd]

I doubt they will use WM as the first time they go overseas for a PPV.

According to Wikipedia: One Night Only, Capital Carnage, No Mercy, Rebellion and Insurrextion were all PPV's held in London, England. With Rebellion and Insurrextion both running three consecutive years. All fantastic PPV's I might add.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WWE_pay-per-view_events

I believe concurrently running a WM in two different countries could feasibly work. It would take a lot of determination and planning, but it can happen. It can't be any more than two venues to work though, any more than that would just kill it, ala WM2. I would also have to believe that Vince would wet his pants at the thought of selling out two different venues for one mega show... think of the huge dollar signs in his eyes there. I'm willing to bet the thought has passed Vince's mind a time or two.

 

[OlderFan]

They already tried this a long time ago. Don't remember which WM it was now but part of it was in Chicago and part in Los Angeles. Did not work well at all.

 

[RKO920]

I agree with what was said earlier, Wrestlemania 30 should be all about NYC its essentially the home of Wrestlemania and the WWE. One 4 hour show from the Garden, and I think Vince will spare nothing to make it huge.

If you want to make it a 7 hour extravaganza or even longer than that maybe a 12 hour event, do something like they did for Wrestlemania 2000, which had "Wrestlemania All Day" where they showed highlights and matches from all the previous Wrestlemanias. I think that's something the WWE could do to make 30 even bigger than it already will be.

 

[blobby30]

if you are looking for a europe/british location for a wrestlemania what about cardiff's millineum stadium it has a 74000 capcity and a retactable roof also the stadium has hosted joe calzaghe fights at 2 am for the american ppv tv so there would be no problem with the time different for the states.
also mason ryan a star for the future is billed from cardiff

 

[Mac Attack]

Wrestlemanias should not be in two places. It was confuse many people and the timing of the event would be out of wack. Also with the Fan Access that takes place regularly I don't think it would make sense to have two seperate fan access events in two different places. In addition I don't like seperating the card because it takes away from the seperate audiences in that they will have bought Mania tickets but won't be able to see the array of stars. I think this would be attrocious and should never happen.

 

[vampirek]

I do like your thinking...

I don't know why people go "ah rah rah rah English weather, we need an indoor arena" because Wembley Stadium now has a retractable roof....

Being WrestleMania 30 though, some sort of massive 7 hour thing could work though, PPV only doco segments sort of thing, or the HOF ceremony like suggested earlier

I don't know what Wembley Stadium you've been too, but the one mentioned does not have a retractable roof... the only football stadium in the UK to have such a roof is the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff.
With that said Wembley is hardily open as some stadiums in the US, most of the crowd is covered by the roof anyways, put a makeshift roof above the ring then again that would cause over issues in terms of what fans can see from certain angles.

I mean I like the idea, split Wrestlemania into two parts, have the World Title or WWE title headline the first one and the other belt headline the other. However there are many flaws which have not be considered with this idea:
1) If you are to put the Hall of Fame in the middle of the two, how do you expect wrestlers who are in the UK to possibly turn up for the event?
2) What would you do about Raw the next night? You can't split that up and you certainly cant fly the other talent back over from the UK to do the show... then you have other issues such as Smackdown the day later.

and to the biggest flaw of the lot:
What happens to the UK fans? Sure you could have the first part of Wrestlemania held at Wembley but then what? Expect them to sit in the stadium between the break and then watch the rest of Wrestlemania in their seats?.... which they can't anyways due to Wembley's curfew

 

[sr2184]

I think your timing could be better.
London 7-9pm live and follow with 9-11pm USA broadcast in the arena
USA. 2-4pm London broadcast and follow with 4-6pm USA live. Still only four hours. Essentially it would be like having ppv of smack down vs raw on same night.
But I would have to say no on this idea. No real reason. It just seems like your trying to carry all the groceries in the house and you don't have enough arm. I like the thinking but that's just too much imo

 

[Poop Master Flex]

I like that you seemingly thought this through quite a bit, but there is a few problems with that:

1) Wrestlemania costs millions of dollars to set up, by doing it in 2 places (especially that far apart) you are essentially tripling the cost because you gotta do 2 arenas PLUS the travel expenses to get all that shit to London.

2) At this point I don't think the WWE has a deep enough roster to pull such a thing off. I'll ignore this one though because alot can happen in 3 years.

3) Having such a delay between showing at MSG and O2 is also problematic. If you do it sync them up as close as possible so their is no 3 hour delay between them both. Taking 7 hours out of your day for wrestling is overkill, most would be burnt out by the time the second showing took place.

4) WWE tried this once in 3 arena's and it was a clusterfuck, but then again Starrcade '85 did it very good so it can be done, but historically it doesn't work in Vinces favor.

5) Its Wrestlemania 30 and the only place it should be at is Madison Square Garden. Maybe I'm old school like that but I feel its the only arena or place that it should be at. Nothing against O2 arena but its been a tradition to take Wrestlemania back home every 10 years and I would hate to not see that happen, even if they still get half a Wrestlemania. I feel MSG is the only place "worthy" enough to hold WM30.

Not saying your idea is bad (it really is quite good) but I think it needs to be tweaked. Maybe have WM29 in 2 arenas, I think it would be pretty cool actually if they did the 2 arena's and had both in Europe and just do something completely out of the norm. Maybe have 2 hours in Germany and the other 2 hours in England.

 

[EastCoastFan]

Not going to happen. They tried doing multiple locations for WrestleMania 2, and it was considered a failure.

 

[TWJC: The Beginning]

It really is admirable the amount of thought that went into this. It'd just be such a pain in the ass to do this.

Why not just save up for a few years and take a plane over to the US? We have beautiful cities and our women have straight teeth (except in the south where they don't have any).

 

[ncb619]

I don't know what Wembley Stadium you've been too, but the one mentioned does not have a retractable roof... the only football stadium in the UK to have such a roof is the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff.
With that said Wembley is hardily open as some stadiums in the US, most of the crowd is covered by the roof anyways, put a makeshift roof above the ring then again that would cause over issues in terms of what fans can see from certain angles.

I mean I like the idea, split Wrestlemania into two parts, have the World Title or WWE title headline the first one and the other belt headline the other. However there are many flaws which have not be considered with this idea:
1) If you are to put the Hall of Fame in the middle of the two, how do you expect wrestlers who are in the UK to possibly turn up for the event?
2) What would you do about Raw the next night? You can't split that up and you certainly cant fly the other talent back over from the UK to do the show... then you have other issues such as Smackdown the day later.

and to the biggest flaw of the lot:
What happens to the UK fans? Sure you could have the first part of Wrestlemania held at Wembley but then what? Expect them to sit in the stadium between the break and then watch the rest of Wrestlemania in their seats?.... which they can't anyways due to Wembley's curfew

This one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wembley_stadium ... obviously

Which actually, upon more research, the roof doesn't fully close... so I was sorta wrong. But yes most of it is already covered, and a temporary roof like you said could probably work



Actually, and interesting thing that I've noticed from this discussion is everyone saying that it won't work because of WrestleMania 2's failure. Guys...come 'Mania 30, that will be 28 years in the past, I'm sure it can be a helluva lot more organised a second time round.

 

[TWJC: The Beginning]

Does anyone even think for a second that Mania 30 will be anywhere but MSG or New York at the least? 1, 10, 20, all there. It's their "home" and as much as Vince expands away and moves towards strictly business and entertainment, he's still got that in his heart.

As for the time thing, I do think it'll be slated at 5 hours like 30 was. I think they failed with the WMXX format though, too many generic 5-7 minute matches, much like manias 4 and 5. Even Eddie/Angle was only like 17 of actual wrestling.

 

[Robbo89]

I'm sorry, im going to have to step in here and give my opinion!

Yeah they tried 2 different locations at WM2 but dont forget, that way 25 years ago (28 at the time of WM30) and look at how much technology had come along since then!

WWE has managed to show all its PPV's live around the world for as long as i can remember and raw since about 10 years ago.

If anybody on here can explain how, using todays technology WM30 cannot be held in 2 different locations it would be appreciated!

Somebody mentioned before about the cost to hold wrestlemania.........yeah but have you not considered the ticket sales money? when Raw comes over to UK for a flagship recording, the tickets usually vary from £40-£20! so I'm pretty sure that a 75,500 seater Millenium Stadium would suffice, and come on its WM! Tickets could be £60-£45 and people would still go because its WM30, the first WM held outside of USA and the WWE has a huge following in the UK! Here are some figures based on them prices i just said....

lets say on average 1/3 of tickets are priced at £60, 1/3 at £50 and 1/3 at £45

thats 25,166 (roughly) tickets at each price level
so 25,166 x £60 tickets = £1,509,960
25,166 x £50 tickets = £1,258,300
25,166 x £45 tickets = £1,132,470

Total made from ticket sales alone = £3,900,730

Then there is merchandise sales on top which could exceed £1,000,000+

so anybody who says it will cost WWE more than they will make cant be serious! and you have the ticket sales and merchandise from MSG too to go on top, aswell as fan axess week and tickets to HOF ceremony. WWE could easily exceed $10,000,000+ from WM30 if that was to happen! but it never will because Europe isnt good enough for a major PPV (at least thats how it seems) because why wouldnt there have been one since Rebellion/Insurexion 10 years ago? we get 2 Raws and Smackdowns a year in the UK, is that a fair way to treat loyal fans of your company?

Also, the ticket prices i just gave are only an estimate, i'm sure the highest priced tickets could easily sell even if they were £100 each for floor seating! does that not prove the it could be successful in 2 locations both for the fans and for VKM?

Rant over!