10 Big Concerns Heading Into WWE Royal Rumble 2021
3. The Rumble Matches Won't Work As Well Without An Audience
For all their faults, WWE have managed to carry on during the ongoing global situation, adapting to the times and doing their utmost to produce a show that fans can still enjoy at a time when they need it. This determination saw them upgrade their eerily silent Performance Center shows to the critically-acclaimed ThunderDome.
Complete with a virtual audience of real-fans and piped-in crowd noises, the ThunderDome is the absolute closest the company can come to recreating the feeling of a live audience. It's not perfect but it's genius, making the product that much more watchable and restoring its larger-than-life presentation.
However, if there was ever an event that needed a live audience, it was the Royal Rumble. The crowd's participation in the event has been well-documented over the years, with the way in which they count along with the countdown before a new entrant arrives or the fact that they always go absolutely berserk when a surprise entrant's music hits enhancing the event.
The lack of an audience at this year's event isn't WWE's fault and the-powers-that-be will undoubtedly go out of their way to make it feel as huge as possible, but you can't engineer the energy that the Royal Rumble audience provides the event with - and there's a strong chance that it just might feel like the Royal Rumble is missing something this year because of that.