Mark Shapiro concedes WrestleMania in Las Vegas may have been a ‘mistake’

WWE ran WrestleMania in Las Vegas in both 2025 and 2026, and it didn’t work. The poor ticket sales this year even became part of the on-screen storylines. And TKO President Mark Shapiro has conceded that running the same city in back-to-back years was a bad idea.

Shapiro sat down with Brian Sozzi of Yahoo! Finance for an interview that was recorded before Mania but was released on Monday. At the time, he took responsibility for moving WrestleMania 42 from its originally scheduled site of New Orleans to Vegas.

“Maybe it’s a mistake I made,” Shapiro said, “because Vegas was so huge last year and such a winner for our fans and the product that I said to Nick Khan, ‘We’ve gotta go back to Vegas next year. We have to move New Orleans down the road and we got to come back to Vegas.’”

Still, Shapiro was not apologizing for the move.

“Absolutely no regrets on going back [to Vegas],” he said, “but the only reason you’re hearing some of the, ‘Hey it’s not what it was last year,’ it’s because we’re not benefiting from the first mover experience.”