Oakland A’s COO Chris Giles Discusses Bringing WrestleMania 31 To Levi’s Stadium
WrestleMania 31 took place on March 29, 2015 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. The show drew an announced attendance of 76,976 and reportedly took in $12.6 million in revenue.
One man responsible for bringing the show to Levi’s Stadium is Chris Giles, the current chief operating officer for the Oakland A’s. In an interview with GV Wire, Giles discussed his first reaction when the proposal for the event was laid on his desk.
“(49ers executive) Paraag Marathe came into my office and flopped this giant RFP (request for proposal) on my desk. My first reaction was like, ‘What is this? Why would we want to host this thing?’ And it turns out, I was just ignorant on the whole thing. This is insane,” he said. “So we ended up flying out to Connecticut, meeting with Vince McMahon, and really pitching them on why he should consider our new stadium for his event. It was honestly one of the coolest events I’ve ever been to.”
Philadelphia was reportedly the other finalist to host the event.
When asked about meeting Vince McMahon, Giles had nothing but praise for the head of WWE and his vision during the meeting.
“He was really cool. He is one of the most visionary people that I’ve ever had a chance to meet. We spent probably 20 minutes telling him about all the great things we were building at Levi’s Stadium,” said Giles. “It took him about 10 minutes to conceptualize this entire tech-first WrestleMania. It was really impressive to watch. His entire team and his family that helped run it were all wonderful.”
WrestleMania 31 was the first WrestleMania to be held in the San Francisco Bay Area and the sixth in California. The show was headlined by Brock Lesnar against Roman Reigns.
