ABSTRACT
Sports entertainment aligns with high concept Hollywood filmmaking tropes to suggest that sports entertainment functions as a high concept of professional wrestling. Aesthetic and stylistic convergence, organized around the marketing of consumer products, directly shapes World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) pay-per-view activities. In the high concept wrestling text, simplistic narrative, star power, branding, product placement, and event franchises blend together to create a style that maximizes image, lifestyle, pre-sold concepts, and ancillary consumer products, creating a concept even “higher” than that of Hollywood cinema.
