It appears that this year’s SummerSlam won’t be the only WWE TV product to air live from Orlando, Florida’s Amway Center in the near future.
The working plan is that Raw and SmackDown will return to airing live starting with next Friday’s SmackDown and assuming everything goes off smoothly for SummerSlam, as much live TV as possible will also emanate from the Amway Center for the foreseeable future.
The news was first reported by WrestleVotes and discussed further in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter by Dave Meltzer.
While WWE hasn’t officially announced anything regarding the Amway Center, Meltzer reported that both employees and production people were told and scheduled to load things into the arena next week for SummerSlam, provided everything goes as planned.
Jon Alba of MyNews13 confirmed that news Friday as his video crew got footage of WWE loading into the venue:
And here’s your confirmation: #WWE loading into Amway Center. #SummerSlam and other TV will be held at the building. Video and pics from our @MyNews13 crew. pic.twitter.com/819tcdEQ4w
— Jon Alba (@JonAlba) August 14, 2020
The rationale is that the company wants to get out of filming at the Performance Center, partially blaming their ratings decline on not being live and the darkness of the facility. As of now, next Friday’s SmackDown will be the final show in the PC for the time being.
Meltzer noted the production costs will obviously increase as running from the PC helped WWE save tens of millions during their last quarter. It will also mean talent and staff will be traveling twice as much assuming they return to live programming, effectively ignoring 14 day quarantine mandates in states like Connecticut and New York.
WrestleVotes reported Friday that WWE will install 2500 square feet of LED boards in the Amway Center so fans can appear live on the show, hosted by active and retire talent. If accurate, that would be similar to what the NBA is doing in their “bubble” at Orlando’s Disney World.
None of the above will affect NXT who will continue to run from Full Sail University, taping every two weeks.
Click Here: COLLINGWOOD MAGPIES 2019