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Wrestle Mania: Grappling with the future of the WWE in Florida
Wrestling’s Second Home
Orlando’s charm offensive won over WWE executives.
The evolution of Central Florida into a hub for World Wrestling Entertainment over the past decade began with a phone call.
In January 2006, Bob Collins, then the WWE executive in charge of marketing the company’s live events, called Allen Johnson, a city of Orlando employee who ran the former Amway Arena and the Florida Citrus Bowl.
After the two began discussing holding the WrestleMania event in Orlando, Johnson quickly brought in John Saboor, then CEO of the Central Florida Sports Commission, an agency charged with luring sporting events to the region.
Saboor saw in WrestleMania a twofold opportunity. It was, foremost, a chance to host a major event; Wrestle- Mania is one of the most valuable sporting events in the world, according to Forbes, similar in scope to an NCAA Final Four or a Daytona 500. Saboor also saw WrestleMania as a way to add momentum to a lobbying campaign by Orlando’s business community to persuade city and county leaders to spend $1.1 billion on a new arena, renovating the Citrus Bowl and building a performing arts center.
Saboor persuaded city leaders to treat WrestleMania as an economicdevelopment project. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who grew up going to Championship Wrestling from Florida events in Osceola County, flew to Stamford, Conn., to personally deliver the city’s pitch to WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon and a dozen other company executives.
“The message was simple: Orlando wants you more than any other community and was willing to assign its political capital and its Good Housekeeping seal to securing the event,” Saboor says.
The charm offensive worked: WrestleMania 24 in 2008 set a gate record at the Citrus Bowl with nearly $6 million in ticket sales. Meanwhile, WWE was impressed with Saboor, who encouraged WWE to begin thinking of its major events as economicdevelopment projects for which cities should compete. A few months later, the company hired Saboor.
Saboor, now WWE’s executive vice president of special events, remained in Orlando, where he helped negotiate a deal to tape a TV show for NXT, WWE’s minor league, at Full Sail University. Full Sail got an established brand to help lend its programs credibility and an on-campus chance for students to gain real-world experience; WWE got access to state-of-the-art production space and a new talent pipeline.
With the Full Sail-NXT deal in place, Central Florida didn’t even need to offer incentives when WWE decided to build its nearly $4-million Performance Center. NXT talent already had to be in Orlando regularly for Full Sail tapings. And Orlando offered an airport with plenty of low-priced flights to markets all over the world and an affordable cost of living for recruits whose pay begins around $45,000 a year.
Last year, WrestleMania returned to Orlando. WWE’s WrestleMania 33 drew a record crowd of 75,245 in April to the revamped CItrus Bowl, now called Camping World Stadium.
This time, however, Orlando had to compete against other cities for the event — and the WWE wound up with a much more favorable deal. In 2008, the city charged WWE a rental fee of $50,000 and got a 25% cut of most souvenir sales. In 2017, the city paid WWE a $400,000 fee and received a much smaller share of the souvenirs.
Central Florida leaders are hoping to land even more WWE business over time. Dyer has pitched the McMahon family on making Orlando part of a recurring rotation for WrestleMania, and Gov. Rick Scott has approached the company about moving its headquarters to the state.
“The more that we’re doing in Orlando, the more exciting it becomes,” Saboor says. “In many respects, Orlando has become WWE’s regional headquarters."
WWE’s Next Generation
The prospect who seems to most excite WWE executives is Shadia Bseiso, who had been working as a TV presenter, live-event host and voice-over artist for a media company in Dubai when the WWE discovered her. Her signing, as the first Arab woman in WWE history, drew headlines around the world.
Bseiso, who grew up in a home with a single television channel, wasn’t a wrestling fan as a kid. But she says she’s always been passionate about sports. She started learning jujitsu four years ago and is already a three-stripe blue belt who competes internationally.
She and the WWE stumbled into each other. She auditioned for a job as a host on the company’s new Middle Eastern show, Wal3ooha, and told the producers about her background in jujitsu. Instead of hiring her as a host, the company gave her a spot in an April 2017 wrestling tryout in Dubai. The tryout hadn’t even ended when WWE officials told Bseiso that they wanted to hire her.
Bseiso arrived in Orlando in January to learn ring awareness and body control and how to safely perform basic moves like headlocks. She has traveled to NXT events but has not yet appeared in one. But WWE executives think they have a star on their hands.
“She lit the internet on fire just signing with us,” says Paul Levesque, WWE’s executive vice president for talent, live events and creative.
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