Taking A Closer Look At The Fans Perception Of WWE WrestleMania
Over the years, WWE’s WrestleMania has always been touted as the ‘granddaddy of them all’ in the professional wrestling world. Coming up to its 40th consecutive event, it’s one of one of the longest running annual wrestling shows, and with that comes a lot of expectation and grandeur surrounding the event.
Coming into this ‘mania season, I was quite curious what about the event appeals (or doesn’t) to fans in 2024. Sure, I know how I feel about WrestleMania and what draws me in as a fan, but how does that differ from the experience of people all around the world? In order to write more conclusively about what the fan perception of WrestleMania is, I put together a nine question survey and put it out publicly for response. The survey was open roughly 24 hours, and overall, we gained 205 responses about a range of topics about WWE, their PPV’s and WrestleMania season itself. After collating and analysing the data, I found an interesting pattern of opinions within it.
Starting off with the question of ‘how often do you watch WWE programming?’, the results showed that 37.1% selected ‘weekly’, 17.6% selected ‘just the big four (PPV’s)’, 12.2% selected ‘just PPV’s’, 7.8% selected ‘whenever I have time’, and 1.5% selected ‘monthly’. The remaining 23.8% selected ‘other’, and submitted a range of answers from ‘whenever something looks interesting’ to ‘only keeping up through social media’.
Right off the bat, the variety of the type of fan that had taken this survey was evident, which means not only was I going to get insight from casual fans and what their view on ‘Mania season’ is, but also the view of fans who consistently engage with the promotion. This gives me a much bigger field of view, and frankly, the ability to come to a more conclusive answer for the question at hand. The most interesting thing about the data from this question, though, is that although it’s showing the wide range of types of WWE consumers who participated, there is a lot of cross over in the general feeling all types of fans have when it comes to WrestleMania.
The next question was ‘if you are a WWE fan, what is your favourite thing about ‘Mania season’?’. I included this question because I thought it was a good opportunity for those who are fans of the promotion to express what it is about this time of year, in particular, and draw them in. Unsurprisingly, there was a surplus of answers that all vaguely made the same points; the most prevalent ones were the nostalgia WrestleMania holds, the pomp and circumstance of the event, seeing favourite wrestlers getting a big moment they’ve been working for, and the sense of community during ‘Mania weekend, especially with the growing number of indie shows throughout. I think the key takeaway from this is that there are generally, a wide array of things that will appeal to different types of fans in this season (lesser common answers covered things such as product quality, the RAW after ‘Mania, the payoff from the Royal Rumble), and everyone would be able to find at least one thing that is an appealing quality to them.
The theme of nostalgia and the pomp and circumstance of WrestleMania is something that remains prevalent in most of this survey. Even in the next question, which is ‘if you are someone who only watched the big four, what is it about them that draws you in?’, these themes are some of the most common answers. Although not solely related to WrestleMania and this time of year in WWE, I included this question because my assumption was, based on personal experience and preference of people I know, that the things that draw people into WrestleMania may bleed into the other PPV’s regarded as the ‘big four’. After collating the data, it very much seemed like this was a correct assumption to have. As previously
mentioned, the nostalgia of these PPV’s is a big draw for a lot of wrestling fans, alongside the marquee matches, and feeling like there’s more chance of just about anything happening.
Conversely, it was brought up in a fair handful of responses to this question that in the past few years, the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania feel like they’re in a different league to SummerSlam and Survivor Series. Whilst many responses consider these two latter PPV’s to
be more impactful than other PPV’s in the yearly cycle, there were also several suggestions of them no longer holding the same aura as the former two PPV’s. Furthering this point, a few responses suggested that Survior Series in particular should be replaced by Money In The Bank when discussing the ‘big four’ WWE shows of the year.
This isnt’t a new discussion, and I can absolutely see why people would feel this way; when it comes to feeling like anything can happen and the mystique of an event, MITB has delivered on this front much more consistently than Survivor Series in the past couple years.
Although this was a WWE based survey, I wanted to learn more about the wrestling interests of the participants and included the question ‘do you watch wrestling outside of WWE?’. Outside of a couple of no’s, the response to this question was VAST. Between the 205 people who responded to this survey, there were 28 unique companies listed from around the globe. Some participants said they only watched ‘indies’, occasionally providing a unique qualifier of what type – Japanese, British, European, and American. I was genuinely blown away by the amount of variety of response this question produced, and it made it clear that the modern professional wrestling fan is almost always consuming the medium from more than one place. This is excellent for the business as a whole, and very encouraging to hear about on a survey that was targeted towards WWE fans, considering that for a long time, it
was marketed as THE wrestling company, and many people didn’t realise how vast the sport was outside of it.
I do believe that there is a solid link between the level of response to that question and the fact that multiple participants previously listed the fact that the number of indie shows that run during WrestleMania weekend is their favourite part of it. Live wrestling has a massive appeal to any type of fan in this business, and it’s clear that creating that sense of community with a multi-day long celebration of this sport is a big reason why ‘Mania season still has so much of the appeal it does with modern wrestling fans.
Changing course with the line of questioning, i asked ‘if you don’t watch WWE on a regular basis, but will be watching WrestleMania this year, why?’. The responses to this were particularly fascinating. Similar to the precious questions, tradition, nostalgia, and specific payoffs were very popular answers. Cody Rhodes and The Rock were name dropped very frequently in this part of the survey. It definitely feels like WWE has succeeded in drawing in a huge number of people with their top storyline – the reasons why vary, but it all boils down to the same thing; everyone wants to see whether Cody finally finishes the story or not.
Of course, there were some other answers here that stood out to me – participants touted ‘because it’s WrestleMania’ more than once in the responses, which genuinely do feel sums it up for a lot of fans. It IS WrestleMania – if there’s ever a time to tune into the product, this is it. As other participants suggested, ‘Mania season is similar to that of the Super Bowl. Even if you know it’s not really all going to be your vibe, and even if your favourites aren’t the key players, you still just tune in because its the ‘done thing’ to do in the fandom. It all ties back into the tradition of the business, and the spectacle this weekend always is for fans.
I asked the question of ‘do you prefer to watch Wrestlemania alone or in a group environment?’. Although there was a scattering of responses about preferring to be alone so they can fully express their emotions without worrying about others around them, a huge majority of participants stated that their preference was to watch in some sort of group setting. I think this highlights the sense of community that ‘Mania weekend creates that’s already been brought up in the analysis of previous questions. This time of year in professional wrestling just has a way of uniting fans and bringing people together, and I think the desire of the majority wanting to be in a group setting for the shows expresses that. Many of the responses specifically mentioned online watch-parties through Discord, which I think is important to draw attention to as it shows this is a world wide phenomena and not just limited to one area. Professional wrestling, and times of year as big as WrestleMania season, truly bring the community together.
The final question I asked in this survey is ‘if you watch WWE on a regular basis, do you believe ‘Mania will be as enjoyable for a fan ‘going in blind’?’. This question probably had the most mixed number of responses in the entire survey. On one hand, many fans expressed that WWE always have top tier video packages, so even if you hadn’t seen a single minute of the product before watching WrestleMania, you would be easily caught up to speed for each match before the bell rings. On the other hand, many participants felt that there was such a dynamic build between Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes, and The Rock that the video package before the matches may not be enough to capture the essence of the story.
I think their is truth to both of these opinions. For most matches that are booked for WrestleMania, simply watching the video package will be enough for a lot of fans to understand what is happening. Regarding the main event angles, though, I do think there is a great point in the fact that there are so many moving pieces, people involved, and content being created that one video package on the night genuinely might not be enough to capture all the nuances.
Overall, I think the main thing that can be taken away from this survey is that regardless of how much of the WWE product someone consumes in the rest of the year, WrestleMania season has an allure to it that appeals to pretty much every type of wrestling fan. A lot of this can be attributed to its tenure, nostalgia, and the level of effort that goes into making it a spectacle, but it’d be remiss not to give credit to the community feeling it creates for fans. ‘Mania weekend has become a phenomenon in the wrestling world, with the event itself attracting promotions from around the world to run an event in the same area during the weekend. This provides even more for the fans attending the WWE shows to do whilst in town, which generates even more of a community feeling. Really, WWE has successfully created a sort of feedback loop, which continues to generate excitement for the event year on year, which certainly reflects in the growth of ‘Mania and the general approach the company takes at this time.
Even this year, we have seen WWE embrace more the surrounding community festivities themselves, with Charlie Dempsey and Shayna Bazler competing at Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport event this past Thursday.
Regardless of the type of wrestling fan you are, WrestleMania weekend has something for everyone. That’s the real beauty of professional wrestling.
