Royal Rumble is the annual tradition in the WWE that marks the beginning of the WrestleMania season, each year. WWE announces the date and location of the show much earlier than the show to get a great start to the year. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there are a lot of questions regarding the status of the first pay-per-view of next year that begins the road to WrestleMania 37.
This year’s Royal Rumble took place at the Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas having over 42,000 fans in attendance. A few months later, WrestleMania 36 took place in front of zero audience from the WWE Performance Center due to the pandemic. Originally, it was scheduled to be at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida.
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WWE To Host Royal Rumble 2021 Event In Saudi Arabia?
There’s no solid update on when a vaccine for COVID-19 will be out and there are chances that Royal Rumble 2021 and WrestleMania 37 will be affected by it. Already, the biggest event of the year is said to have moved from the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, California. Now the Rumble could be moved out of the United States.
According to The Dirty Sheets Patreon (via Wwfoldschool.com), WWE doesn’t have any location confirmed for next year’s Royal Rumble, as of now. Earlier this year, speculations had that Royal Rumble 2021 will be held in the T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington. But that won’t be the case in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
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The source then revealed that WWE is unable to go to Saudi Arabia later this year for Crown Jewel 2020 due to the pandemic. So the company will owe 3 pay-per-view events to the country in 2021. Two of them will be the regular Super ShowDown and Crown Jewel events, while the third one could end up being Royal Rumble 2021.
WWE will get paid big-time money for doing such a huge Royal Rumble PPV event which is also one of their Big Four events of the year. Also, in Saudi Arabia, the COVID-19 situation is a lot better than the USA. As of this writing, USA has a total of over 7.3 million COVID-19 cases so far, while Saudi Arabia has crossed 333,000 cases. This means WWE will have a great opportunity to bring back the fans to a PPV show.
WWE already conducted the ‘Greatest Royal Rumble’ event in Saudi Arabia in 2018. So it won’t be an out of the box idea for the company. While Saudi fans love WWE for entertainment, from a business standpoint, doing Royal Rumble 2021 in Saudi Arabia would be the best choice, given the current circumstances in the USA caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Greatest Royal Rumble back in 2018 took place at the King Abdullah Sports City’s King Abdullah International Stadium in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia that has a capacity of 60,000. Even if WWE could bring half of the audience, it would be a welcoming experience for them.