Wrestlemania 40 to kick off on Sunday; the first since McMahon family sold WWE

Intercontinental Championship: GUNTHER (c) vs. Sami Zayn

Six Pack Ladder Tag Team Championship: The Judgment Day (c) vs. DIY vs.

Awesome Truth vs. The New Day vs. A-Town Down Under vs. New Catch Republic

Jey Uso vs. Jimmy Uso

Rey Mysterio & Dragon Lee vs. Dominik Mysterio & Santos Escobar

Jade Cargill & Bianca Belair & Naomi vs. Damage CTRL

WrestleMania 40 Day 2

WWE Universal Championship: Roman Reigns (c) vs. Cody Rhodes

World Heavyweight Championship: Seth Rollins (c) vs. Drew McIntyre

Women’s Championship: Iyo Sky (c) vs. Bayley

United States Championship: Logan Paul (c) vs. Randy Orton vs. Kevin Owens

Philadelphia Street Fight: Bobby Lashley & The Street Profits vs. The Final Testament

LA Knight vs. AJ Styles

This is the first time WrestleMania will take place under the TKO banner. Vince McMahon agreed to sell World Wrestling Entertainment Inc to Endeavor Group Holding in April 2023 - the McMahon family had controlled WWE for seven decades at the time. The sale was finalized six months later. Endeavor merged WWE with Zuffa, the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), to form TKO Group Holding in September 2023. According to news reports, the merged entertainment entity is worth around $21 billion. The Rock is now a TKO board member.

Wrestlemania Press Conference

Wrestlemania is WWE's biggest premium live event of the year. The marketing campaign for the two-day event in Philadelphia went into overdrive in February, when the company held a press conference at the T-Mobile Arena just three days before the Super Bowl. Sports entertainment company TKO which now owns the WWE got The Rock for the event, and live-streamed it free on Peacock. Though there was no wrestling planned, The Rock did slap Rhodes across the face, which garnered 15.7 million views across WWE's social media platforms in less than 12 hours. More than 4.7 million people watched the event live - according to TKO, this makes it the most-viewed WWE event outside the ring in WWE history. The press conference had more than 100 million views in less than 12 hours.

WrestleMania has a long and rich history with many storylines going back years. Some of these storylines will find new turns, perhaps even resolution as WrestleMania 40 gets underway this weekend. The Rock participating in WrestleMania XL, is only going to heat things up more.

Logan Paul, WWE's current United States champion and co-founder of Prime beverage company, podcaster and YouTuber, uploaded a video on X with his reaction to the WrestleMania XL press conference. Paul currently has 23.5 million subscribers on YouTube and 6.8 million followers on X.

Pat McAfee, who has rejoined WWE's Raw commentary team and co-hosted the WrestleMania XL press conference, recently interviewed The Rock on his self-titled television show on ESPN. A clip of the video posted to McAfee's X account has more than 3 million views.

WrestleMania also generates revenue for the cities where it's held. AP reported that last year, WrestleMania 39, which was held at SoFi Stadium, generated $215 million for the Los Angeles region, according to a study done by Applied Analysis. WWE said that broke its prior record from a year earlier, when WrestleMania 38 had a $206.5 million economic impact for the Dallas/Arlington region.

WWE says that since 2016, WrestleMania has generated more than $1.2 billion in cumulative economic impact for the cities that have hosted the event. Shares of TKO Group Holdings, Inc., based in based in Stamford, Connecticut, are up almost 7 percent this year.

With inputs from AP Business Writer Michelle Chapman.