With WrestleMania 36 coming up on April 5 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, fans are already speculating on the venue for WM 37 in 2021. The big favorite seems to be Los Angeles, so UK bookmakers would probably not accept bets on Wembley being chosen this time. Hope for the Brits had been rekindled in the summer of 2019, when WWE had issued a survey that listed a series of cities as potential WrestleMania hosts: London, England; Chicago, Illinois; Jacksonville, Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; Santa Clara, California; Houston, Texas; Dallas, Texas; Philadelphia, PA; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Miami, Florida; Orlando, Florida; Tampa, Florida.
After that, the issue of WrestleMania in the UK seems to have gone quiet once more. There had been claims in some British media, back in April 2018, that WWE had made a decision in favour of Wembley Stadium, where the last true WWE PPV event had been SummerSlam 1992. Triple H was the one to throw water on the fire at that time: “I always hear about Wembley, I always hear it was such a massive success. It was not. I will just say that from a business standpoint, it was not. That’s why we didn’t come back”.
Speaking as a WWE executive, Triple H had revealed that a major obstacle are time zones. And truly, while RAW, for example, airs in primetime in the States, Brits must stay up late if they want to watch it live. The English fans are five hours ahead of Eastern Standard time, and so must either give up sleep and watch the show on YouTube or replays, or read about it later. Not much fun, indeed. But the other way round would leave the Americans dissatisfied.
If the event happened in London, let’s say at 7 p.m. local time, it would air live in North America anywhere from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. WrestleMania live on a Sunday afternoon? No way! Even less acceptable is any idea of filming it live in primetime in London and then air it on delay for North America. Fans in the States would go berserk.
Apart from that, WrestleMania implies huge logistic operations and so far the maths is telling WWE that taking all that across the ocean would not be economically viable, despite the massive crowds that a Wembley event would attract from both the UK and the European continent. They are still thinking of it, as the 2019 polls signals, but “we’re still trying to figure it out”, as Triple H put it.
In the meanwhile, Los Angeles is pushing hard to snatch the 2021 event for its SoFi Stadium. The arena is scheduled to host the Super Bowl in 2022. Public wisdom says that LA would use WrestleMania 37 as a test of how the venue would handle the huge numbers of participants. SoFi Stadium can accomodate 70,240 attendees for the Super Bowl and 100,240 for events such WrestleMania, FIFA World Cups, Olympic Games and music concerts.
