Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Wants To Keep Good Relationship With WWE And Invest In State

WWE has made Florida its home since the middle of March, running events at the Performance Center each week. WWE was originally scheduled to hold WrestleMania 36 in Tampa, Florida, but had to move the show to the Performance Center due to the coronavirus pandemic.

WWE was deemed “essential business” by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on April 9, allowing WWE to run live shows at the WWE. Florida will lift its stay-at-home order beginning on Monday as the state slowly starts to re-open. And DeSantis could see fans of some capacity back in arenas by the middle of summer.

“I would like to get to a point, I’m not saying we’re going to get it in May, but I’ve helped recruit. I wanted wrestling to be filmed in Orlando,” said DeSantis during his press conference on Wednesday. “I’d like them to do WrestleMania. They were going to do WrestleMania in April. That was hundreds of millions of dollars. I want to keep that good relationship, I want to invest in Florida. We got UFC to come to Jacksonville. There’s not going to be any fans, but I think that’s going to be a good event for people. I work with Phil Mickelson on making sure they have what they need for that Tiger Woods match. There’s gonna be a lot of good stuff going on, but I don’t think we’re probably ready to have fans. I do think if the trends are good, as you get into June/July, I think there is a window to have some fans. You’re not going to have everyone packed in, but in 90-degree weather, if you’re out there and someone’s 10 feet away from you and you want to watch a ballgame or something, you may be able to do that. So this is something that we’re just gonna have to do. We’re going to be driven by the facts, driven by the data. But I think that Major League Baseball coming back, I’m hearing this, I think that that’s going to be exciting for a lot of people. There’s going to be a lot of possibilities.”

Major League Baseball and other sports have discussed the possibility of trying to begin its season without fans, but nothing official has been announced. WWE has continued to cancel or postpone events through the beginning of August and Vince McMahon recently said on the first-quarter financials call that he isn’t sure when fans will be able to return to the arena.

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