Reported by Adam Martin of WrestleView.com
On Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 3:39 PM EST

The paid attendance for WrestleMania 24 in Orlando, Florida ended up at 63,100, so the event was more papered than what the company estimates first indicated with 11,500 free tickets given away for the show. This would make it the most papered WrestleMania since 1992, which set a record by giving away 15,000 tickets. Despite the large attendance, it was not the "hot live ticket" that recent outdoor WrestleMania's had been. Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s involvement also had virtually no impact on the live gate since a majority of the tickets were sold well in advance and when the Mayweather announcement went down, ticket sales following that were slower than many expected. There is interest in having WWE return to Orlando as they loved the local media coverage treating it as if they were hosting the Super Bowl.

WWE now earns $1,154,000 per week in rights fees when you combine Raw, Smackdown and ECW. However, because of the cost of producing the TV in High Definition, the cost of each television taping went from $600,000 last year to $750,000 this year. Running two television tapings per week, the weekly cost has jumped to $1.5 million and is more than they get paid for the shows domestically. Despite this, the company is still profitable because they also receive $692,000 weekly from international television deals.

Source: The Wrestling Observer Newsletter