There had been speculation for a while, but it looks like we finally know where next year’s WrestleMania, WrestleMania 33, is going to be held. Early this morning, the Orlando Business Journal posted what they classified as a “rumor” that the show is going to be held at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida, with an official announcement coming as soon as next week. According to the article, Orlando “has been in the mix” for at least the lost month or so, with visions of, in the words of reporter Richard Bilbao, “steal[ing] the show from long-rumored market Minneapolis.” The city of Orlando confirmed in January that they had put in a bid to get the show, with hopes of a $50 million economic impact on the city. WWE, of course, has a major presence in Orlando these days, with the WWE Performance Center and NXT tapings both in the Orlando metropolitan area.
A few hours later, Justin LaBar of TribLive tweeted that he had confirmed the story with a WWE source:
Lot of speculation & I just confirmation from source in #WWE—WrestleMania 33 will be in Orlando at the Citrus Bowl.
— Justin LaBar (@JustinLaBar) March 3, 2016
He later added that the plan right now is for the show to take place on April 2nd, 2017. That;s tentative, though: WWE has also drafted promotional materials that list April 9th, 2017 as the date, and it’s currently being mulled over with local and stadium officials
The Orlando Business Journal had also reported last month that the cities in consideration were Orlando, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. It surprised a lot of people when Raw hit Minneapolis in December for the Slammy Awards show and there was no announcement about WrestleMania. Why? In August, the Minnesota Vikings posted a video claiming that WrestleMania was coming to the brand new U.S. Bank Stadium, with the claim that “Before the building is even open we have already secured the Super Bowl in 2018, the NCAA basketball Final Four in 2019, we are a finalist and seem to be in a pretty good position to secure the college football playoffs, the BCS championship game, you know we’ve got WrestleMania coming.” WWE responded to news stories about the video with the following statement:
Minneapolis is one of the many cities that has expressed an interest in hosting a future WrestleMania. Beyond WrestleMania in Dallas, TX on April 3, 2016, locations for future WrestleMania’s have not been announced.
Nobody thought much of it, because WWE likes to announce the WrestleMani location themselves. Four months later. the lack of an announcement at the Slammy Awards show (which was a lot closer to when it’s usually announced then an announcement next week would be) appeared to signal that they were out of the running for WrestleMania 33.
