WWE kicks, punches, slams marketing efforts into high gear ahead of WrestleMania, its big event

This year's WrestleMania is just days away, but the WWE's marketing campaign for its biggest premium live event of the year was kicked into overdrive months ago.

In February, three days before the Super Bowl, with all eyes on Las Vegas, WWE tried to snatch some of the NFL's spotlight for itself.

The sports entertainment company held a press conference in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena, just down the road from the stadium where the Super Bowl was being played, to promote WrestleMania XL, a two day event in Philadelphia that begins Saturday. It plugged appearances by top stars including Cody Rhodes and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who recently became a board member for WWE's parent company, TKO Group. The free event, which was live streamed on Peacock, was a bid to grab the attention of the thousands of football fans in town, and potential viewers nationwide.

Thousands showed up for the event which didn’t include any wrestling, but The Rock did slap Rhodes across the face, garnering 15.7 million views across all of WWE’s social media platforms in less than 12 hours. More than 4.7 million people watched the event live, making it the most-viewed outside the ring event in WWE history, according to the company. The press conference had more than 100 million views in less than 12 hours.