Took a trip home to visit family this past weekend. Because home is Pittsburgh, that meant seeing and driving around a lot of preparations for the National Football League’s Draft in Western Pennsylvania, a multi-day event coming up April 23-25 that will include concerts, activities, live tapings and broadcasts in addition to pro teams selecting college players for their rosters.
As a middle-aged American male from a footbahl tahn, the Draft has always been on my radar. But it wasn’t always televised,
and prior to the rise of the modern internet and social media 20 odd years back, it was something even most relative diehards like myself only followed day-by-day. But with the help of their media partners, the NFL has made the Draft into one of several signature events on their calendar that cities compete to host (sound familiar?), and that a lot of fans pay extremely close attention to — even though they don’t involve a single down of football being played.
It’s a model a lot of other sports entertainment operations have sought to replicate. So maybe it was just my recent exposure to the NFL’s Draft prep, but when WWE’s Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque announced today (April 6) that Raw and ESPN play-by-play announcer Joe Tessitore would reveal the Saturday and Sunday night line-ups for WrestleMania 42 on ESPN’s Get Up! morning show tomorrow… my first thought was that they were following the League’s playbook as they work to stabilize their rocky relationship with the Disney-owned sports brand.
Whether they are or not, here’s the CCO’s message:
If they are trying to turn this and other stop on the Road to WrestleMania into mini-“events” that generate buzz for the show itself, that seems like a smart idea. This may not be the year to do it though…
Are you excited for the Night One and Two reveals tomorrow? More or less than you are for WrestleMania 42 itself? Are there more things WWE can “event-ize” around ‘Mania and their other big shows, whether or not the Saturday and Sunday line-up news ends up being one of those things?
