Stephanie McMahon is promising fans that live shows will feature a different look and feel when it comes to production and creative.
During an interview with Variety, McMahon explained how excited WWE is to get back to live shows, stressing how important fans are to the wrestling experience.
“I think I can speak for everybody that touches the WWE Universe — whether it is our fans, our Superstars, our employees, or our partners — we absolutely cannot wait to get back together and come back home where we belong,” McMahon told Variety. “And even though we never went off the air and we continue to produce our content, even though we brought in nearly a million virtual fans over this time period through the ThunderDome with over 70 plus live shows, there’s still just such a huge component missing without fans physically in attendance.”
WWE’s Chief Brand Officer also revealed how the company’s stint inside the Thunderdome taught the crew many lessons, describing how WWE plans on using those lessons to create change at the upcoming live shows.
“In the ThunderDome, we were able to experiment with different types of technology,” stated McMahon. “And we needed to over-deliver for our partners and our fans watching at home. But now we have the ability to apply all of those learnings to the live event experience with our fans. So from a production and storytelling standpoint, it will look and feel different.”
McMahon continued, “We’re going to have a new set design, a new presentation of our talents, different locations, and arena setups. We’re going to be utilizing augmented reality in a way that we never have before. We experimented with it a lot during Thunderdome, but it is now going to be incorporated into our talent entrances. There’s also going to be animated graphics. It’s going to be so exciting and so different than anything we’ve done before.”
The interview could be alluding to other interviews where Stephanie McMahon has stated that WWE has some surprises in store for SummerSlam. It’s also been rumored that WWE will have special “themed” live events to drive ticket sales.
In May, WWE announced they would return to live events beginning in July 16 with a 25-city tour, starting with the return’s debut at the Toyota Center in Houston for SmackDown.