WWE brought back live fans for WrestleMania, but actual attendance numbers have shown how many tickets the company sold.
WrestleMania tickets sold very well, but many tickets were bought up by scalpers. If they remained unsold on the secondary market, they were still bought. An actual fan just didn’t buy that ticket to occupy a seat. Money still went to WWE for the ticket.
WWE claimed a sell-out crowd each night, but that really isn’t the case. Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics reports that 18,328 people attended night one of WrestleMania and 18,924 people went to night two. That means they had 37,252 fans across both nights, most of those were repeats.
The actual tickets purchased are a different story. 20,172 tickets were bought for night one and 20,634 tickets sold for the second night. Just because they were sold didn’t mean they actually had fans in the seats.