Las Vegas’s interest in a sustained partnership with WWE to host WrestleMania may extend beyond the success of WrestleMania 41, potentially driven by significant economic challenges facing the city, notably a downturn in international tourism. This perspective comes from Dave Meltzer, speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, who indicated that the city’s need for business is a crucial factor in its relationship with WWE.
Vegas is hurting. That’s—which is actually the part of the story that no one’s talking about—is Vegas is hurting. And they did… and also that Vegas did so well that weekend with all those tourists. The thing that’s really hurting Vegas is that, you know, people from foreign countries are not coming.
Observing the crowd composition at the recent WrestleMania 41, Meltzer noted a discernible shift towards a more domestic audience.
Even at Mania, it felt like… even though Mania sold out both shows and there were a lot of people in town, I just felt like most of the people were from the United States. Like, you didn’t have… I mean, I just remember Mania, meeting people from especially Europe, South America, you know, the Far East—I mean everywhere. And this year it was mostly different states. It was different.
The decline in international visitors to Las Vegas, which heavily relies on such tourism, is partly attributed by Meltzer to “political reasons” affecting travel to the U.S. As an example of the local economic impact, he pointed to the WWE host hotel during WrestleMania.
I saw the Fontainebleau Hotel—the one that was the WWE host hotel, they had all those events—I mean, did you see the story about that? They had to lay off a bunch of employees… Yeah, they’re hurting bad. And they’re not the only ones.
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