WrestleMania 40 broke five WWE records to prove that wrestling is truly in a glory era

WrestleMania XL has become the most-successful and highest-grossing event in WWE history, shattering all-time records for gate, viewership, merchandise, fan event and social media.

The event drew a record-breaking crowd at the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, breaking the previous gate record by 78 percent. In fact, a total of 145,298 people attended WrestleMania 40 over two nights.

Viewership increased by 41 percent compared to the previous year, according to the company, who confirmed that WrestleMania XL is the most socially viewed WrestleMania ever with 660 million views over the past two days.

WWE’s YouTube channel, a platform with more than 100 million subscribers, also saw its most-viewed day in channel history on WrestleMania XL Sunday with more than 67 million views in 24 hours.

It appears the highly anticipated in-ring return of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson played a part in the record numbers, as well as Cody Rhodes’ much-anticipated match-up with Roman Reigns.

In terms of merchandise, sales were up more than 20 percent versus the previous record set at WrestleMania 39, while WWE World at WrestleMania was the highest-grossing and most-attended fan event in company history.

And the records didn't stop there, either. Ahead of WrestleMania XL, the most recent edition of Friday Night SmackDown at the Wells Fargo Center drew the largest gate in SmackDown history.

NXT: Stand & Deliver was also the most-attended NXT event ever with 16,545 in attendance at Wells Fargo Center.

And soon after the "The Show of Shows", Monday Night Raw recorded the largest gate in Raw history as The Rock gave a major update on his WWE future.

Image credit: Getty

After the action-packed weekend of action, John Cena confirmed when he plans to retire from the WWE.

Speaking on The Pat McAfee Show, the 46-year-old discussed his schedule and insisted he would be too busy to make a WWE return before Christmas due to shooting commitments.

He did say, however, that he hoped to return to the WWE in 2025 for one last run.

Jack Kenmare

Senior Journalist at SPORTbible with a passion for long-form journalism. Almost 10 years’ experience across online and print.

@jackkenmare_