WrestleMania 27 Now Air from Atlanta

Well, maybe not “save” WrestleMania, but help ensure it does better than last year’s edition, WrestleMania 26, which, at well under one million pay-per-view buys worldwide, was considered a bit of a disappointment. What’s different this year is WWE’s use of social media—that is to say they’re actually using it this time around. But even if this year’s edition, WrestleMania 27, which airs from Atlanta tomorrow on pay-per-view, does better than last year’s, how much of that can be attributed to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and how much of that can be attributed to the return of The Rock? Serious business, etc.

To be fair, it very much is serious business. WWE pulled in $477.7 million in revenue last year (up from $475.2 in 2009), and its flagship TV program, Raw, on the USA cable network, regularly draws [PDF] five million viewers per week. The move to a more family friendly, PG-oriented product may have upset some fans—you can’t visit a pro-wrestling message board without seeing fans clamoring for a return to the late 1990s/early 2000s Attitude Era, what with its edgy content and more adult-oriented storylines—but the shift has enabled the company to strike lucrative deals with the likes of Mattel.

The company has had a somewhat unusual relationship with technology in recent years. While it was quick to move its NXT television program from the SyFy network to WWE.com, it did so only to make room for another program, Smackdown, which made its SyFy debut last October. (NXT still airs on television networks outside of the U.S.) It made available, on YouTube and WWE.com, full episodes of some of its television programs last year, but this was long after people had been watching TV shows online on services like Hulu and iTunes.

But the embrace of social media has been a concerted effort. The company’s chief marketing officer, Michelle Wilson, told Multi-Channel News that the company’s increased use of Facebook in particular should help the company achieve its goal of one million worldwide buys. (The company currently has 4.9 million “likes” on the site.) It has promoted its talents’ individual Twitter accounts, who use the platform as an extension of on-air goings-on,