WrestleMania 42: How commercials, ads and excess took over WWE’s biggest weekend
Once again, this year’s WrestleMania was a mixed affair: Night 1 was weaker than a nursing home fruit drink, while Night 2 kicked like a mule. But throughout the ups and downs, one fairly constant complaint has been made by those who have watched the show: What is with all these commercials?
They weren’t joking about this. During WrestleMania 42 weekend, American viewers were treated to about an hour of advertising each night. In other words, about a quarter of WrestleMania 42’s total duration was taken up by content trying to sell you something.
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First, there were listings for other WWE products like the merchandise store. Second, there were WWE’s business partnerships, including Drew McIntyre and Tiffany Stratton connecting an online gaming platform. And then there were the third-party ads, with everyone from Wayfair to the World Cup getting in on the action.
You can see why fans might feel wronged. And if that’s you, rest assured, it’s not in your head – there have never been so many commercials during WrestleMania. And we can prove it.
Pat McAfee walks to the ring before the WWE Undisputed Championship match between Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 42 at Allegiant Stadium on April 18, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
(Ethan Miller via Getty Images)
The TKO effect
For comparison, I sat down with a stopwatch and counted the time taken by commercials in three previous WrestleManias: ‘Mania 22 (20 years ago), ‘Mania 32 (10 years ago), and ‘Mania 38 (2022, and therefore the last before the WWE went on sale before the TKO merger).
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On ‘Mania 32, I counted 3 minutes and 49 seconds of advertising, and on ‘Mania 38, there were 6 minutes and 10 seconds. For ‘Mania 22, there was none at all.
(To clarify, we’re talking about real commercials — not just a brand’s logo shown on replay screens or Michael Cole mentioning Snickers, but the entire broadcast ending with an ad.)
Without wanting to be too rosy about the good old days, there was something almost quaint about the advertisements that appeared. Those were the days when it was still new to see WWE wrestlers – Ha, look, it’s The Miz! – appearing in advertisements for Cricket or similar. Not so much now.
How do you get from that figure – the equivalent of about a minute every hour used by commercials – to the current ratio, where you have five minutes of advertising between certain matches?
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It’s the TKO effect, I guess.
To demonstrate just how bad the problem has gotten, just look at the various commercials and movie trailers from this year’s WrestleMania 42 weekend. Add them up and they come to 10 minutes on their own. That’s longer than several WrestleMania championship matches, including Trick Williams vs. Sami Zayn, Becky Lynch vs. AJ Lee, and Liv Morgan vs. Stephanie Vaquer.
Not just ads
While I had my trusty stopwatch, there was another complaint I was keen to probe: the length of the entries. By now, we’re all familiar with the accusation that WWE’s biggest shows in particular are massively padded with elongated entrances. But is it true?
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Again, this weekend’s show had form on this front: by my calculations, there were 1 hour and 42 minutes of entries over the two nights, which is about a fifth of the weekend’s total length. (That’s slightly less than some numbers I’ve seen elsewhere – I assume they also included Alicia Taylor’s in-ring announcements.)
As for whether that’s significantly more than in previous years, that depends on your starting point. If we just look at the overall percentage of broadcast absorbed by entries, not much has changed.
By my calculations, about 20% of this weekend’s show time was taken up by entries. This is actually slightly less than four years ago (21%) and not at all different from the previous two series. In 2006, entrances still took up 18% of traffic time.
Again, this doesn’t tell the whole story. For starters, we know there are a lot fewer matches than before. If the inputs are still consuming 20% of the execution time, then the individual inputs must have taken longer.
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Indeed, that is exactly what the data shows. The average number of WrestleMania entries has increased by a third over the past decade. Each entry now takes an average of three and a half minutes.
Of course, there is one obvious caveat: not all entries are the same. I suspect few fans were complaining when “Stone Cold” Steve Austin took five minutes to get into the ring after his exciting return at ‘Mania 38, for example. Or when Finn Balor made his extra-theatrical entrance on Sunday in the role of “The Demon”.
But when the longer entrances simply involve Randy Orton or Stephanie Vaquer heading to the ring in what is essentially just an extended version of their weekly televised entrance… you can understand why fans would be frustrated, even if they still enjoy the match that follows.
CM Punk in action against Roman Reigns during WrestleMania 42 Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
(WWE via Getty Images)
And the fight?
The biggest problem I can see from the numbers is the overarching problem that dominates everything: there is simply less struggle in modern PLEs.
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This year, the streaming time for actual wrestling matches for WrestleMania 42 was only 34%. That’s down from 43% four years ago and 51% in the 2000s.
Where did this time go?
The aforementioned advertisements have taken a significant part. But so does everything else. The longer Hall of Fame segments; celebrity haircuts; Night 1 recaps; legends return to announce attendance figures – all this takes time. And WWE doesn’t take him at the gates.
“It’s all part of the show,” as a certain Chief Content Officer might say. And maybe it’s true: Would it really be WrestleMania without a little pageantry?
At the same time, the numbers don’t lie. The percentage of this show taken up by commercials and entrances is only growing – and the wrestling itself is the biggest loser.
