WWE Received Exorbitant Amount As Site Fees for Royal Rumble 2023

The WWE Royal Rumble 2023 Premium Live Event, held on January 28th, was a highly anticipated event that delivered on its promise of surprises and set multiple records. However, the event became embroiled in controversy when WWE initiated legal action against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to prevent the release of the event’s bidding contract. With that said, the site fees for the event have been revealed.

WWE’s legal actions to block the release of the agreement between the company and the City of San Antonio have drawn considerable attention. The contract in question relates to the terms under which WWE hosted the 2023 Royal Rumble at the Alamodome, a venue owned and operated by the municipal government.

WWE filed a complaint on February 16, 2024, to prevent the disclosure of this agreement, arguing that the contract contains proprietary information that should be protected as a trade secret under Texas’s public information law. Initially, WWE’s efforts seemed successful, as the state Attorney General’s office granted approval in April 2023 to withhold the contract from public release.

However, this decision was overturned on January 17, 2024. In the reversal, Assistant Attorney General Michelle Garza stated that WWE did not provide sufficient evidence to prove that the information in the contract qualifies as confidential under the law. This ruling underscores the principle that contracts involving government entities, particularly those related to events held at publicly owned venues like the Alamodome, are typically subject to public record laws.

Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics has revealed key details about the financial arrangements behind the WWE Royal Rumble 2023, held at the Alamodome in San Antonio. According to government records, the city of San Antonio provided WWE with over $500,000 in value to host the event, including a direct cash site fee of $250,000.

In addition to the site fee, the city submitted total expenses amounting to $575,415.98 to the Texas Governor’s Office for reimbursement. These expenses likely covered various costs associated with hosting the event, such as infrastructure, security, and promotional efforts.

At the moment, the lawsuit is still ongoing as WWE sent an appeal to the Texas Attorney General to keep the site fees confidential earlier this year. Regardless, we’ll have to see if the lawsuit will be dropped now that the site fees have been made public.

What do you think of WWE being paid so much money as site fees for last year’s Royal Rumble event? Let us know in the comments section below!