I haven't really paid much attention to WWE since the late 90's or early 2000's. I don't really remember when I tuned out but it was right around the time of something called the "Attitude Era" where things got pretty gnarly on the show. There was a lot of blood, plenty of swearing, and it was about as close to something rated-R that we were going to get on TV. Then some people died and kids started doing the crazy stuff they saw on TV so they had to dial it back a LOT and I kind of lost interest.
The global audience still likes it though and I am not going to tell people what they should or should not enjoy so if you dig it, watch it... I'm happy for you.
But we reach a certain level of insane when it comes to the fans where people are willing to shell out crazy amounts of money just to be around their wrestling heroes and I found out exactly what that amount is in a couple of articles I read recently.
I've never really understood the appeal of attending an event like this where you are so far away from the actual action that you can't even see the people in the ring without binoculars. I guess the people in the cheap seats just watch the big TVs or something but to me it seems kind of stupid to pay all that money just to watch another TV instead of the TV you have in your house.
But it gets much much crazier. I found out about a combo package that is available for fans of Cody Rhodes where they get tickets, some face-time with Cody and also get to hang out in his tour bus or something, if that is even something that is real.
So the deal here is that you get to ride on the bus with Cody and interact with him to some degree I would imagine and I would guess there aren't very man of these tickets available because how many people can you really fit on the bus? I have no idea how far you travel but I would guess it isn't that far because only a fool would think that Rhodes is actually riding around the country doing sold out shows in a BUS.
The price to be able to do this? Nearly $10,000 per person.
That's just insane to the point where nobody would buy it, right? Well guess again because it sold out immediately.
Only 12 people are allowed on the tour and the idea behind it faced a lot of backlash but WWE didn't address it and Cody defended it when he was asked about it in the press. He said he has "something special planned" for the people who ponied up this money and said that 2 of the guests from last year are going to be on his podcast. Seems kind of defensive to me but I believe in the free market and if there are some jagoffs out there that are going to pay more than most of the world makes in a year just to sit with a guy they saw on TV, let 'em.
But then we have the ticket prices for the event just generally speaking. Remember those seats that you are going to have to watch on the jumbotron because you are too far away to really see the ring? Those are $450 if you are lucky enough to actually get them from the source. IN most cases these tickets will be completely bought up by reselling companies who will extort the masses by as much as they can get for them. This is all completely legal as well. Here are the astronomical rise in average ticket prices over the years.
2022: $135
2023: $169
2024: $341
2025: $635
I recall when I was young I went to a non-televised event that was in some local area arena and had a capacity of about 1000 people I would guess. I got to see some of my childhood heroes like the Midnight Express, Tully Blanchard, and Lex Lugar who was my favorite wrestler in the world at the time. It was an awesome experience for I think 10-year old me. The price for this was $12. Sure there wasn't a bunch of explosions like they have today but the star power was about the same.
Later on in college when WCW was dying I went to see Ric Flair wrestle, who is also one of my all time favorites and many consider him to be the goat, and this arena was larger but mostly empty because nobody really cared about WCW anymore and tickets were around $25 then as well. This was also a non televised event and according to a podcast I recently listened to with John Cena being interviewed, non-televised events are increasingly rare in the big leagues these days.
This is probably the reason for the inflated prices because less shows means more demand for the shows that they do have and a lot of this willingness to pay these prices is because there isn't any real competition to WWE these days. There are some other ones but they are so insignificant that I can't even remember the names of them.
Honestly, I could really even tell you who wrestles anymore because I never watch it.
To me, I can't really think of anything that I like enough that I would pay $10,000 to see in a single night. Can you?
Plus even though I am sure that Cody and the other stars will put on their happiest faces considering they are going to be bringing in over $100,000 in revenue from a small event, the people need to be extra-delusional to actually believe that Cody is actually going to be friends with them.
Sports aren't about sports anymore, they are all about money and while I thought that WWE was in a decline I suppose these ticket prices indicate quite the opposite.