Major news broke on Wednesday, as Turki Alalshikh took to Snapchat to tell the world that WrestleMania is heading to Saudi Arabia. It is a move that comes with immediate and understandable trepidation by several across the wrestling industry.
“WrestleMania has been announced, for the first time outside of America, WrestleMania in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2027,” Alalshikh said in his video.
Fightful Select and several other outlets followed up on the report with additional context. According to Fightful’s report, a source said that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” PWInsider also reported that there was a press release about the announcement that was eventually retracted.
This wasn’t a complete surprise, as it was rumored that the country wanted a bigger show at some point in the future. According to Fightful, “Saudi officials have made their desire to have a WrestleMania in the country clear since virtually the start of their relationship.”
WrestleMania in WWE is the biggest step in Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing campaign
For Saudi Arabia, the goal of the partnership with the WWE was about one thing: sportswashing. The country’s government faced longstanding human rights accusations, and sportswashing isn’t a new tactic to combat that play. The WWE isn’t the only organization involved, as other sports organizations like F1 and the UFC have also partnered with the government.
Unfortunately, WrestleMania is the biggest event to date to be announced in so far. Many fans took to social media to express their frustration and concern with seeing the largest organization in wrestling further its work with the Saudi Arabian government, but this is a sad reality that not only wrestling fans, but sports fans around the globe must see. As long as the bottom line continues to be the governing factor in sports and entertainment, Saudi Arabia will be a major player in both worlds.
With such large sums of money tied to this partnership between Saudi Arabia and WWE, it is hard for fans to find an effective measure to push back. The first course of action that comes to mind is to not watch, which is one step. Another is to point that frustration toward the sponsors that willingly work with WWE while the promotion partners with such an entity.
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