source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter
WWE publicly claims that 80,012 fans were in attendance at WrestleMania 23 at Ford Field. They claimed this number so that they could claim it as being a Ford Field record. As it turns out, 80,012 isn’t the real figure. The show actually drew 74,687 total fans. And the real paid attendance was 66,670 fans. WWE’s corporate website released business figures for the month of April and listed seven domestic shows for the month, averaging 16,900 per event as paid attendance. The same chart notes that if you take away WrestleMania from skewing the average, you have 8,605 fans as the average for the other six shows. Doing the simple math, you come up with 66,670 fans in attendance at WrestleMania. The 74,687 figure comes from WWE releasing the record merchandise numbers along with the per caps (how much the average fan spent on merch at Mania). That number comes out to be 74,687 real people who were able to buy merchandise.
Early estimates peg the WWE Backlash 2006 pay-per-view at doing 197,000 buys; 126,000 of which were domestic. That’s got to be a major disappointment in the eyes of WWE as they expected far better results because it was a tri-brand show – in the neighborhood of 260,000 to 280,000 buys. No Mercy 2006 also did 197,000 buys.
Drew Galloway and Sheamus O’Shaunessy, two European wrestlers WWE recently signed to developmental contracts, are being assigned to Steve Keirn’s new developmental territory, Florida Championship Wrestling. They’ll be relocating to Florida in a few weeks, if they haven’t already. O’Shaunessy had five prior WWE tryouts before finally nabbing a developmental deal. Galloway had two.
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