WWE President Nick Khan addresses the company’s decision to have WrestleMania 43 take place in Saudi Arabia

While speaking to Joy Forum, WWE President Nick Khan addressed the company’s decision to have WrestleMania 43 take place in Saudi Arabia…

“It was a natural next step for us. In WWE, we realized a number of years ago that we can’t simply pipe American product out globally and hope to be a global product. You actually have to have boots on the ground. If you look at what we’ve done with our Premium Live Events over the last few years, about half of those now take place outside of the United States. We’re in the eighth year of a long-term partnership with Turki Al-Sheikh and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We’re bringing Royal Rumble here at the end of January. It’s the first time Royal Rumble, which is our second or third biggest event, will take place outside of the US or Canada. WrestleMania 2027 will be here in April of that year, first time ever WrestleMania will be outside of the US or Canada. We’re excited. We think viewership is going to be strong. We think people will come to the Kingdom to see our show and we’re going to put on a spectacle.”

“WWE had received a number of different offers from entities outside of the US, and to me, as I try to help lead the company, it’s all about relationships. A word used too often in our business is ‘partnership,’ but when you’re actually partners with somebody and you can all them and say, ‘There is an issue on this. Can we fix it?’ ‘Yeah, no problem.’ That’s what Turki and [Saudi] have done with us, repeatedly. When Turki expressed interest in having it here, we got together for a couple of different meetings, worked out the deal in short order, and had the good fortune of announcing it the day before Canelo-Crawford, our first fight together in Las Vegas.” (quotes courtesy of Jeremy Lambert)