WWE has been heavily focused on its Global Expansion initiative in recent years, to the point that a larger portion than ever before of its biggest shows as of late have taken place outside the United States. Whether it is something like Elimination Chamber taking place in Saudi Arabia, Canada, or Australia since 2022, Bash in Berlin and two Clash at the Castle pay-per-views in 2024 along with Survivor Series: WarGames in Vancouver and so on, it seems WWE is making this one of its highest priorities.
Something to think about for 2025 is that the annual Road to WrestleMania 41 tour taking place in Europe this March (from March 14th until March 31st) is going to be in a different position than ever before, and it may end up having some interesting repercussions for the build up to The Showcase of the Immortals.
What is This Tour?
For context, WWE typically does a European tour after WrestleMania, capitalizing off the high energy of their Super Bowl, essentially, and riding the waves of new champions that were crowned and a general reset of the storylines.
This year, the tour is taking place over the course of the following dates before WrestleMania:
- Friday, March 14: Barcelona, Spain - Friday Night SmackDown at Olimpic Arena
- Saturday, March 15: Dortmund, Germany - Road to WrestleMania Tour at Westfalenhalle
- Sunday, March 16: Hannover, Germany- Road to WrestleMania Tour at ZAG Arena
- Monday, March 17: Brussels, Belgium - Monday Night RAW at Forest National
- Friday, March 21: Bologna, Italy- Friday Night SmackDown at Unipol Arena
- Saturday, March 22: Belfast, Northern Ireland - Road to WrestleMania Tour at SSE Arena
- Sunday, March 23: Nottingham, England - Road to WrestleMania Tour at Motorpoint Arena
- Monday, March 24: Glasgow, Scotland - Monday Night RAW at OVO Hydro
- Friday, March 28: London, England - Friday Night SmackDown at O2 Arena
- Saturday, March 29: Vienna, Austria - Road to WrestleMania Tour at Wiener Stadthalle
- Sunday, March 30: Amsterdam, Netherlands - Road to WrestleMania Tour at Ziggo Dome
- Monday, March 31: London, England - Monday Night RAW at O2 Arena
Even while WrestleMania is being pushed to later than ever this year (taking place April 19th and 20th instead of it's normal slot of late March, or the first week of April), this 17 day tour takes up the bulk of the run toward the big show. Elimination Chamber will have only just ended 2 weeks prior, but that is taking place in Toronto. Clearly, WWE will be traveling quite a bit, bouncing around between many different countries in this month.
One of the interesting things about this is that it shifts the focus from relaxing after WrestleMania 41 to actively putting in the most amount of work heading into the show. That may not seem like a big difference, but anyone who has ever been a performer knows the stark difference between the days prior to a performance as opposed to the days after one.
Ignoring the fans, the Superstars and other employees are actually in a spot where their focal point will be in staying healthy and getting the audience fired up about Mania, rather than having some downtime after giving it all on The Grandest Stage of Them All.
That means rather than a relaxed schedule where they are taking part in the local cuisines, enjoying the tourism, hitting up the best European casinos and posting countless selfies on beaches and such, they will be hyper focused on stressing out over the most important time of the year.
Granted, the flip side of this is that if they are able to relax, we might see the most chilled out roster heading into WrestleMania ever. Assuming they aren't getting sick or being too tired out from all the travel between countries, being in a state of more fun than normal can actually boost their adrenaline and give us an even more motivated roster.
And that goes for not just the performers, but the fans, too...
Hot Crowds Before and After WrestleMania
Whenever WWE goes abroad, the audience can't be more energetic. They rarely get an opportunity to see live shows, so whenever WWE pops up in their area, they jump on it with intense vigor.
On a positive note, that means the shows leading up to WrestleMania 41 are going to have hot crowds who are supremely invested in everything that is happening, pretty much no matter what is on their screens. Considering a lot of the content before Mania tends to be promo-heavy (as WWE wants to protect people from potential injuries as well as not blow all the action ahead of time), there is always an unintentional slump where if the segments don't land well—or aren't as interesting—the audience couldn't care less.
For example, last year on March 11, 2024, you were probably entranced with Sami Zayn's gauntlet win to earn a title shot against Gunther, or the promo between Seth Rollins and Drew McIntyre about their World Heavyweight Championship bout, but the crowd wasn't as invested in Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell against Ivy Nile and Maxxine Dupri. This time, in a similar scenario, the European audience will likely be louder and more engaged just because they are still getting to see this live action take place at all.
On the other hand, the downside to this is that if the post-WrestleMania content has a lot of filler, that means the American audience that would typically be less captivated by this material are going to get the even harder hill to climb. If it's just repeats of what we've already been seeing before WrestleMania, it doesn't matter if you're in Minnesota or Georgia, you're not going to be as over-the-moon about just getting anything at all as the foreign markets would be.
Of course, WWE can avoid that problem by just making all of its shows great, but that might be too much to ask for. Creating must-see television for three hours on Raw, three hours on SmackDown, and two hours on NXT every single week and not having any bad segments is nearly impossible.
But there's another part of that must-see element that is going to be brand new this year, and we don't know how heavily it will influence the hype for WrestleMania...
Raw on Netflix
Starting January 6, 2025, WWE Monday Night Raw is going to be broadcast on Netflix.
At a quick surface glance, why does that matter? It hasn't always been on USA Network. What's the big deal?
Netflix operates differently than traditional cable or network television stations. While it will traditionally be broadcast around its usual 8 p.m. ET time slot, Netflix doesn't have to adhere to that strict schedule. We already know that the plan is for the shows to air live at any given time they are being recorded, instead of being taped in advance and aired on a delay.
That means instead of doing the usual setup where if WWE is in the United Kingdom, they would typically do the show around noon eastern time zone, spoilers would get out on social media, and by 8 o'clock, everyone could know what happened in advance. Instead, the show will just air earlier, and if you're not able to watch it live, you're not going to be able to engage with the live audience in the same way. No trending hashtags support from people who have work in the middle of the afternoon and are staying off their phones because they don't want to know spoilers. That's ignoring the issues with the streams like the Mike Tyson and Jake Paul fight had.
There will be a loss of urgency that takes away from the communal viewing experience. If you can't be there live in attendance, watching it live is the next best thing, but being able to turn it on at other points in the day makes you a passive television viewer, instead. Effectively, the roles have reversed where normally, European markets would be staying up later to watch these shows, but it's going to be the United States crowds who are left out of the mix.
The very idea of its global reach is currently unknown to us, too. In theory, Netflix is more easily available in a wider range of homes since people can just subscribe to that on their computers or phones and don't need to have a cable television service or even a television, but that also means that people need to pay to watch Raw in a different way than before. How many people have cable television entirely for WWE? How many of those people will be annoyed that they need to continue to pay for it to get access to SmackDown on USA, but now, have to pay a Netflix subscription, too? It's not as though even the European market can watch all of those shows all through Netflix to counteract that.
Will having this European tour before WrestleMania mean that there will be a significant boost in people watching at least Monday Night Raw live, or will it mean that there will be less people than ever because consumers just don't have the ability to pay for that extra service, will be annoyed that the live broadcast isn't airing at a time where they can be part of the fun with everyone else, or will even be turned off by the less familiar chants and taken out of the atmosphere?
There's no way of knowing yet, but WWE will certainly be experimenting this year in a lot of ways, and if the Road to WrestleMania 42 tour takes place back in the United States again in 2026, that will be a sign that there were more hiccups than highlights. If the shift from post-Mania to pre-Mania works out well, we'll likely be seeing this as the go-to way of doing things going forward.
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