The WWE ThunderDome was a bio-secure bubble created by the American professional wrestling promotion WWE, in partnership with the full-service fan experience company, The Famous Group. It was launched in August 2020 as a way for professional wrestling fans to attend WWE events virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bubble was a videoconferencing crowd system and arena staging utilized for broadcasts of television shows and pay-per-views of the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. It worked by users signing up days before an event, logging in and joining at their allocated call time to be seen on a screen at the event in real time. It was free of charge to spectate an event.
In its 11-month usage, the ThunderDome was hosted at three arenas, all in Florida, United States. Its first residency was at the Amway Center in Orlando from August 21 – December 7, 2020. Due to the start of the 2020–21 ECHL and NBA seasons, WWE relocated the ThunderDome to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, which began on December 11 (Tropicana Field was actually named the ThunderDome before the Rays moved in). Due to the start of the 2021 Tampa Bay Rays season, the ThunderDome was then relocated to its final location of the Yuengling Center in Tampa, which began on April 12, 2021. The final ThunderDome-based broadcast aired on July 15, 2021, due to the company's resumption of live touring for Raw and SmackDown, which began on July 16. The period of time that WWE produced shows from the ThunderDome has been referred to as the "ThunderDome Era".
During the first three months, there were over 130,000 entry requests to access the ThunderDome website, with over 650,000 by March 2021. The WWE ThunderDome earned the "Virtual Fan Experience" award at the 2020 SPORTEL Awards, the award for "Best Tech Innovation During the COVID-19 Pandemic" at the 2021 Cynopsis Sports Media Awards, and the award for "New Product or Launch" at the 2021 Cablefax FAXIES Awards. A similar setup called the Capitol Wrestling Center was utilized for WWE's NXT brand from October 2020 to September 2021.
History
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March 2020, the American professional wrestling promotion WWE moved the majority of its programming for their Raw and SmackDown brands to their WWE Performance Center training facility in Orlando, Florida with no fans in attendance; in late May, the promotion began using Performance Center trainees to serve as the live audience, which was further expanded to friends and family members of the wrestlers in mid-June. On August 17, 2020, WWE announced that they would be relocating to Orlando's Amway Center, where their episodes of Monday Night Raw (and sub-show Main Event), Friday Night SmackDown, 205 Live, and pay-per-view (PPV) events would be broadcast for a long-term period, beginning with the August 21 episode of SmackDown. As with the broadcasts from the Performance Center, these programs were produced behind closed doors but with no in-person spectators. They also featured a larger-scale in-arena production, a bio-secure bubble billed as the WWE ThunderDome, with screens surrounding the ring displaying virtual spectators via videoconferencing (similar to the NBA bubble). While the August 21 episode of SmackDown was their first television episode produced in this manner, SummerSlam just two days later was their first pay-per-view to be broadcast from the ThunderDome.
WWE's initial residency agreement with the Amway Center expired on October 31, but with the option to extend the contract with a two weeks notice. The contract was extended to November 24. On November 19, WWE announced that the ThunderDome would remain in Florida, but would be relocated to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, beginning with the December 11 episode of SmackDown. (Coincidentally, Tropicana Field also used to be called the ThunderDome when it was the home arena of the Tampa Bay Lightning from 1993 to 1996.) This move was also done due to the start of the 2020–21 ECHL and NBA seasons as the Amway Center is the shared home of the Orlando Solar Bears (ECHL) and the Orlando Magic (NBA), with WWE delays leading to the Solar Bears to play their first three weekends of the season on the road. The final ThunderDome show produced from the Amway Center was the December 7 episode of Raw.