It was previously reported that WWE announced an attendance of 42,715 people for the Royal Rumble, but the Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that it was actually less than that. The actual number, according to Dave Meltzer, was 36,000. Some people were turned away at Minute Maid Park on the day of the show and it was still a sellout. Even lower than reported, it will still likely be the highest attendance for a WWE show this year other than Wrestlemania. It is behind Wrestle Kingdom 14 and the six sessions of hte NCAA tournament at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
Interest in general for the Rumble was down from last year. There were 500,000 Google searches, which is said to equal about 125,000 to 230,000 PPV buys if WWE were still exclusive to PPV. That’s much lower than any other modern Rumble prior to the WWE Network.
The Royal Rumble didn’t hit the top 20 in Google searches for the day, as the number is cut off just over 500,000. Searches for Bryant were at 57 million (an unusually high number) and Grammys were at 13 million. WWE still did better than MMA, at least, as the Bellator event with Cris Cyborg was 100,000 (#13) and UFC from the night before was 50,000 (#18).