Time is Money: Looking at WrestleMania’s Projected Run time
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you’ve probably seen at least one or two articles floating around about the potential length of this year’s WrestleMania. If by some miracle you haven’t seen anything about it, let me catch you up. Basically, WrestleMania 35 is expected to have a 17 match card, with a two-hour preshow and an estimated eight-hour runtime. This has caused a bit of a stir in the wrestling community as some people are annoyed at the idea of such a long pay-per-view and others are happy (or at the very least, accepting). I wanted to delve into the reasons set forth by both camps so let’s discuss.
My Twitter and Intagram feeds are pretty split down the middle when it comes to projected runtime so we’ll start with those that say it’s too long. I understand the sentiment. Eight hours of anything can easily be too much. Add the fact that those attending live will be in their stadium seats for the same amount of time as an average workday and I can see why some fans might be hostile to such a long runtime. Another thing to think about is time zones. I live in the eastern time zone, which is pretty much what everything in WWE is set by since it’s headquartered in Connecticut. Last year’s WrestleMania main card started at 7pm and ran until around 12:30am. It was a tad tough for me, but I know my fellow fans in the UK and other countries were essentially awake all night. In that respect, I can see why an eight-hour show would rub them the wrong way.
Match quantity and quality have also been discussed. Seventeen matches is a lot to plan for and that means that some of the matches will inevitably suffer with rushed endings, weird booking, or a drained crowd. We saw that last year with the lackluster United States Championship fatal four-way and Braun Strowman’s tag team victory with a ten-year-old. When you’re trying to fit everyone and every title on the show, something is going to give. And on the other hand, some matches drag on for far too long, either killing the story or sapping too much energy from the live crowd.
Let’s move to the happy/accepting crowd. A lot of these people are either attending live or simply don’t mind making their own plans to watch the show. WWE events, especially the Big Four pay-per-views, are quite expensive. When you take tickets, access/meet and greet passes, travel, accommodations, food, and merchandise, you’re racking up quite a tab. For the people making the journey to WrestleMania, the long runtime could arguably be seen as justification for the money spent. After all, I know I would be upset if I spent hundreds, or more, of dollars on a two-hour event. There has to be some sort of return on the investment and this long runtime is just part of the experience of going to WrestleMania.
Although I mentioned the number of matches before, it can be brought up again. Though some matches might end up being shorter or not quite getting the payoff we’d like, there’s something to be said for getting more matches and more superstars on the card. For some fans, this is one of the only events they watch so it makes sense to put a lot of star power on the show. Sometimes there are feuds where it would be a missed opportunity to not have them duke it out at Mania. Plus, as several people have pointed out, no one is exactly forcing anyone to watch the event in its entirety in one sitting. If you have access to the Network, or some other way to watch, then you’re free to tune in and out however you want.
At the end of the day, WrestleMania is going to run for as long as Vince McMahon wants it to and there’s really nothing we can do about it. It’s up to us as fans to decide whether or not we want to stay up and commit to all eight hours or if we want to catch up on it at a later date. So let’s all stop attacking each other and the promotion and enjoy WrestleMania!
-Wynter
