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What's the story?
WWE recently published on their website the results for their first quarter in 2018. Among the details and facts and figures, they talked about the statistics regarding their largest show of the year, WrestleMania 34 and how it performed compared to the previous year.
WrestleMania 34 was one of the largest events in the history of WWE, ranking among their top WrestleMania's of all time in terms of the crowds which they were able to attract.
In case you didn't know...
WrestleMania 34 saw some changes made to WWE, as it was the culmination of a year of wrestling storylines. Some continued with unexpected turns, while others defied what had been expected would happen for over a year.
The event saw the crowning of the Cruiserweight Champion, Cedric Alexander. It also saw the winner of the WrestleMania Women's Battle Royal, Naomi. WrestleMania 34 set the record for the youngest WWE Championship holder of all time when Braun Strowman selected Nicholas out of the crowd as his partner for his match with the Bar.
Shinsuke Nakamura had a match with AJ Styles, after which he turned on him, while Charlotte beat Asuka unexpectedly ending the seemingly indomitable streak.
Ronda and Kurt saw off Stephanie and Triple H, but the biggest unexpected moment was when Brock Lesnar was able to retain his title yet again, defeating Roman Reigns. For over a year, it had been rumoured that Roman was to become the champion by defeating Brock, but it was not to be.
The heart of the matter
On WWE.com, the company announced the results of the strong first quarter, while also talking about WrestleMania 34.
They revealed that WrestleMania 34 broke the record for the Mercedes-Benz Superdome’s highest grossing entertainment event at $14.1 million, attracting 78,133 fans, making it one of the top-ranking WrestleMania's of all time.
It was also the most watched WrestleMania in the history of the company as it was able to reach 2.12 Million households.
Compared to the previous year, this year's WrestleMania week saw 2.7 Million more hours of activity on the WWE Network, as the subscribers saw 25.2 Million Hours of content in that week. That makes it 14 hours per subscriber on average. Last year they had only seen 22.5 Million hours.
Other than the network, Social Media hours of 13.9 Million were consumed on digital and social media platforms, making it a meteoric rise of 27% from the previous year. April 9 was WWE’s most-viewed day ever on YouTube with more than 50 million views.
What's next?
WWE had a phenomenal first quarter and will look to continue with their newly formed, dual-brand pay-per-views. To kick this off, Backlash 2018 is set to take place this Sunday, on the 6th of May.
Author's take
While WWE is seemingly not as popular as during the Attitude Era, they have grown their reach and have been able to achieve phenomenal heights. The Network has assured them of a dedicated fan-base, and the numbers which they have posted have been spectacular to say the least.
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