It was announced on
WWE.com that the WrestleMania 30 pre-show will be two hours. The plan as of now is to air the the first half of the WrestleMania 30 Pre-Show can be viewed on WWE.com, the WWE App, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pheed at 5pmET/2pmPT. At 6pmET/3pmPT, the pre-show will continue exclusively on WWE Network. A report from
PWInsider states that the first hour is being designed to push WWE Network sign-ups while the second hour would be more of a traditional pre-show or Kickoff Show as WWE has been calling it of late. That line of thinking seems a bit off. Why not have the first hour on WWE Network where you already have the people that will get the show (as part of the $9.99 Network price). Then if you air the second hour of the pre-show on those other sources you can spend that hour enticing them to the buy the show. Some people may not want WWE Network, but they may be willing for the PPV itself. By not doing the last hour of the pre-show before WrestleMania itself they could be hurting themselves in terms of last minute buys. The WrestleMania 30 broadcast is a four hour show beginning at 7pmET/4pmPT, which is 6pm locally in New Orleans. Every WrestleMania since WM X-Seven has been at least four hours with WrestleMania 20 actually going a bit longer than that. There's currently no word about a post-show although it appears to be likely. Whether it goes for 30 minutes like it does after Raw and Smackdown or extends to an hour, that's going to be a long night for the production team. While it's certainly understandable that WWE wants to add another hour to the pre-show, they are asking a lot of the fans. Not only are the fans supposed to sit through a four hour show, but on top that they're doing two hours of pre-show. If they add an hour long post show then we're talking about 7 hours of broadcasting in one night. The Super Bowl broadcast in America usually has a four hour pre-game show in addition to the four long game. By doing something nearly as long as the NFL, WWE can just say they're trying to show they are putting on a show as entertaining as the NFL does. Based on the length of the show including the pre-game and likely post-game, WWE will likely brag about how WrestleMania 30 will be the biggest of them all. It will certainly be the longest too. It's fair to say that WWE is doing everything they can to entertain their fans at WrestleMania 30 on Sunday April 6. For that they should be commended. It's not easy to produce all the shows that they do, yet they're able to do it at a consistently high level with few problem. For their sake, let's hope the WWE Network stream has no issues because it would be a disaster if there were.