Rumble Not Expected to Sell Out, But That’s Not a Bad Thing

It’s all in the details. This Sunday, “Royal Rumble 2017” comes to us from the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. The Alamodome holds over 60,000 people and can be expanded to over 70,000 for certain events. This weekend’s show should draw a huge crowd, but the interesting question is how many. Well that depends on what you mean.

According to the “Wrestling Observer Newsletter”, there are under 40,000 tickets sold for the show so far. When you add in papering (giving tickets away) and the potential for last minute ticket sales, including those on the secondary market via sites like Stub Hub, this could be one of the biggest crowds of all time. From the Newsletter:

“In 1997, when they did the Rumble at the Alamodome, they did more than 62,000 fans, but that was heavily papered and the paid was 48,014, but that was also with super low ticket prices. In those days, most tickets were sold in the local market. This year, the idea was it’s a big destination weekend with NXT on Saturday night and that they could get travelers in. Keep in mind that even WrestleMania in recent years only draws 15,000 to 26,000 from the local market and the rest are travelers.

“The paid as of 1/23 was under 40,000 and it was predicted to me it would be around 40,000 paid before Reigns used the same number on television a few hours later. If they paper, they can do significantly more than that and also can exaggerate the number to a degree. There were 14th row tickets available at press time through Ticketmaster and seats in almost every price range, with $25 tickets still available. The secondary market starts at $30, meaning nobody who purchased the cheaper tickets is looking to resell. This will be the largest North American gate in company history aside from a WrestleMania show.”

httpss://youtube.com/watch?v=F8C7Kj8njoU

No matter how you look at it, this is going to be a huge show. The building is so big and WWE can give away more than enough tickets to make the place close enough to full. If nothing else they’re going to make a fortune off ticket sales (if there are 40,000 tickets sold at $50 apiece on average, that’s $2,000,000). This is a big night for WWE and even if it’s not entirely full, the show is going to be huge.

Do you think WWE will break 40,000 tickets sold? Who do you think will be a surprise entrant in the Royal Rumble? Let us know in the comments below.