WrestleMania 42 begins in Las Vegas with 13 matches across two nights

WWE opened WrestleMania 42 in Las Vegas as a tightly packaged media property, not just a live sports spectacle. The company said the event at Allegiant Stadium featured 13 matches across two nights, including eight championship bouts, with Night One anchored by Cody Rhodes vs. Randy Orton for the Undisputed WWE Championship.

The distribution strategy showed how central pro wrestling has become to the streaming-era attention economy. WWE said WrestleMania 42 streamed live on the ESPN App in the United States and on Netflix internationally, with the first hour of Saturday’s show simulcast on ESPN2. The official start time for both nights was 6 p.m. ET, 3 p.m. PT, and a WrestleMania 42 Countdown began at 3 p.m. ET, 12 p.m. PT on both April 18 and April 19. ESPN’s Night One coverage was led by Andreas Hale.

Las Vegas also remained part of WWE’s broader business formula. WWE and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority announced in 2025 that Las Vegas would host WrestleMania 42, and WWE said the city was hosting the event for the third time, after 1993 and 2025. The return to Allegiant Stadium came after WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas drew 124,693 fans over two nights and became the most successful and highest-grossing event in WWE history, giving the company a ready-made benchmark for scale, revenue and spectacle.

The surrounding WrestleMania week schedule reinforced that this was a citywide entertainment property. WWE scheduled the Hall of Fame ceremony for Friday, April 17, at Dolby Live at Park MGM, extending the event beyond the stadium and into a broader destination package. With live coverage, a staggered pre-show rollout and platform-sharing across ESPN, ESPN2 and Netflix, WWE used WrestleMania 42 to keep one of its biggest brands visible across multiple screens and multiple markets at once.