WWE Response To COVID-19

Over the years, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) has been a multimillion-dollar company. They produce live TV shows all around the country in areas where live crowds would attend and watch WWE’s storylines and wrestling matches. Then when COVID 19 made a big impact in the United States, everything changed. They began to recognize they had to make changes throughout the workplace based on the COVID 19 restrictions. They also had more understanding of their staff and wrestlers that requested time off during these times. 

One big change that happened because of COVID 19 is that they are now only filming shows from the Performance Center in Orlando, Florida. Before wrestlers enter the Performance Center, TMZ reported that “the medical team will take each individual’s temperature before they enter the building”. Once an individual made it inside the building, TMZ also reported that they were “encouraged to wear a facemask”. These practices are put in place to protect everyone from COVID 19. 

Knowing that WWE has relocated their shows live to only the Performance Center, they aren’t traveling around the country as of right now, or at least their company isn’t. All of WWE’s staff doesn’t live in only Florida, meaning that WWE has to find a way to get all of their wrestlers and staff personnel to the Performance Center. The problem that WWE is facing though is that in the states of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey there is a 14-day quarantine mandate. This means that incoming airport travelers from COVID 19 hotspots (which is inclusive of Florida) must stay indoors for 14 consecutive days. WWE is not a company that likes to turn away their talent because of a health mandate, so what they did instead found a loophole. The rule is that incoming travelers via the airport into those states must self-quarantine for 14 days. Notice it does not say that travelers coming from a car have to follow that mandate. Essentially what WWE wanted their staff and wrestlers in those areas to do was drive from whichever one of those three states that they lived into Philadelphia and from there catch a flight to Orlando, reported Sportskeeda. Since Philadelphia didn’t have the quarantine mandate in place, wrestlers could come from Florida back to Philadelphia and take their car back to their respective home state and not have to deal with quarantine. That rule however is no longer a loophole and WWE has yet to find another.

As everyone now knows that large arena gatherings aren’t allowed right now, how is the WWE still having a consistent audience? Well, WWE wanted to still have fans in their arena, but they knew that COVID mandates would not allow it. The WWE still wanted to find a creative way to have the same energy on the show though since the loud audiences are what makes the show look really good. With this in mind, the WWE arena changed into this new wrestling atmosphere called the Thunderdome. The Thunderdome has big and long LED boards all around the ring in which will show faces of fans tuning in through a device of some sort. As far as actually getting on the LED boards, you have to get lucky. WWE is not charging money to give fans a spot on the board, but rather a lucky drawing. From there, it is basically if you win you get a spot on the LED boards, if you lose you don’t get on the LED boards.