Multiple Factors Involved In WWE Running Major Shows In Indianapolis

The city of Indianapolis will be hosting some massive WWE events in the future, including the 2025 Royal Rumble.

It was announced earlier on Monday that the city of Indianapolis, Indiana will be hosting the 2025 WWE Royal Rumble on February 1st as well as future two-night WrestleMania and two-night SummerSlam events. Those three PLE events will take place at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, which is the home of the NFL’s Colts. Here’s part of the press release.

“WWE, part of TKO Group Holdings, and Indiana Sports Corp today announced a first-of-its-kind partnership that will bring WWE’s three largest stadium events – WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Royal Rumble – to Indianapolis.

Kicking off with Royal Rumble on February 1, 2025, Lucas Oil Stadium will host all three Premium Live Events including a two-night SummerSlam and two-night WrestleMania in future years.

Additionally, Raw, SmackDown, NXT and WWE Live Events will emanate from arenas across Indiana, including Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and Evansville throughout the partnership.”

The announcement didn’t state what year the future WrestleMania and SummerSlam will take place. We do know WrestleMania 41 in 2025 will be in Las Vegas while SummerSlam 2026 will be a two-night event in Minneapolis.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, “sources said the deal involves the largest site fee ever for a WrestleMania and for a Royal Rumble.’ There were no exact figures mentioned in their report.

WWE Avoiding NFL Playoffs By Going With February Royal Rumble Date

For the first time ever, the 2025 Royal Rumble will take place on Saturday, February 1st rather than a date in January. Fightful Select reports that avoiding the NFL’s Super Bowl weekend was a big factor and so was being away from the NFL playoffs.

In recent years since WWE moved the Royal Rumble to Saturdays instead of Sundays, they have done the same thing with the Rumble PLE taking place on the Saturday during the weekend between the AFC/NFC Championship games and the Super Bowl. The 59th Super Bowl takes place on February 9th, 2025.

Regarding the Royal Rumble possibly going to two nights like SummerSlam, a longtime WWE higher-up told Fightful that the Rumble is constructed in a way that makes it easy to turn it into a two-night event. Since there is a Men’s and Women’s Royal Rumble match every year, one of them could take place on Saturday while the other one would be on Sunday.

It was also mentioned by Fightful that a positive thing about Indianapolis is that there’s an ease of access to it in the midwestern part of the US. Other major American cities are within a decent driving distance, which means a lot of WWE fans could make it to the shows.

Also, Lucas Oil Stadium being a dome means there won’t be weather concerns when events are held there.