More on Crowd Issues at WrestleMania
Thanks to Douglas Miller for sending this in:
I saw Nick's note about Bryan Alvarez stating there were numerous crowd issues at WM30 last night; it was much worse than the 20 minutes he reported. It took about 40 minutes from getting in the back of the line for a friend and I to enter the Superdome and purchase a program and popcorn (3:40 PM to just about 4:20 PM; really reasonable and expected considering the size of the event). We then immediately entered the stand still mob of people pushing in the hall outside of section 113. Due to the numerous people trying to get to different sections and people waiting in line at the nearby concessions stands, beer vendors forcing their way through, and the fact that some of the booths took up a half of the width of the hallway, the fans in this mess started "MOVE," "THIS IS BULLSHIT," and "CLOSE THE BOOTHS" chants. At one point a security guard tried to access the situation and the lights above us went out leaving us with just the concession stand lighting. At 5:15 PM, we were just getting past the outside of section 112. Not long after, ERTs with a gurney eventually started forcing their way through, and security told us that the area just beyond us was blocked to tend to an emergency (our seats were in section 109). We went back and informed an usher wearing a beige jacket about the issues and to find out an alternate way to get to Section 109, and she refused to believe me and said that was the easiest way. She was ultimately unprofessional and refused to help, so a few of us went back to the mob to wait. Eventually, security was able to direct the mob and we started moving to our desired sections. At 5:55 PM, We reached our seats at section 109 just to watch the end of the pre-show on the screens. The only real bit of the 2 hour pre-show I got to see was the Cesaro swing on a monitor as I waited in the mob. Luckily, Hogan, Austin, and The Rock were amazing and quickly dissipated any anger we had.
On an interesting side note the pre-show table was just below our section and I noticed Booker T and maybe Alex Riley watched most if not all of WM30 from the table with Mick Foley eventually joining them.
Did Hogan Help 4/4 SD! Viewership?
This past Friday night's WrestleMania go-home edition of WWE SmackDown, featuring footage from WrestleMania XXX Axxess and Hulk Hogan's return to Friday night, drew 2.71 million viewers. This was down from last week's 3.057 million viewers.
WWE Stock News
WWE stock closed at $23.90 per share today, down 14.70%. The high was $27.04 and the low was $21.73. The stock took a big hit today as a result of WWE announcing the early Network subscriber numbers.