WWE President and TKO executive Nick Khan spoke about WrestleMania coming to Saudi Arabia in Riyadh in 2027 during his appearance at the Joy Forum.
Khan discussed the efforts being made by WWE to become a more international, global product, and the need to take WWE’s biggest shows to different parts of the world to succeed in fulfilling this goal.
“It was a natural next step for us,” Khan said. “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.”
Khan continued, “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.”
Nick Khan was also asked about Saudi Arabia over another country, to which he explained.
“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,” he said. “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.”
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
