SummerSlam opened in Minneapolis on Saturday as a two-night stadium event, because the traditional one-night arrangement had apparently left several hours of available human attention sitting around unsupervised.

WWE brought its annual summer show to U.S. Bank Stadium on 1 and 2 August, with the event streamed in the United States on the ESPN App and internationally on Netflix. Fans were therefore offered the chance to spend an entire weekend watching people settle personal grievances in sequinned clothing while a production team searched for a camera angle containing the maximum possible fire.

This was not WWE’s first experiment with a two-night SummerSlam. The format had already proved its usefulness: wrestling can now have the scale of a major sporting final, the duration of a minor constitutional crisis and no natural moment at which anyone is allowed to say they have seen enough entrances.

Minneapolis was given the first WWE stadium event in the city, which is a significant honour. It also meant U.S. Bank Stadium, normally accustomed to professional football, had to prepare for a weekend in which the principal tactical question was whether a man could be thrown through the announcers’ desk without disrupting the sponsored graphic beneath it.

The matches were advertised as enormous. This is standard wrestling language, but on this occasion it had a literal administrative component. There were two nights, separate pre-shows, fan events and enough surrounding programming to ensure that a supporter who began following a feud in July could emerge in August with a working knowledge of local hotel arrangements.

WWE calls SummerSlam the Biggest Party of the Summer. A party is an interesting comparison. Most parties end when somebody notices it is late. SummerSlam now operates on the slightly different principle that there are more tickets available tomorrow.

There is a practical case for the expansion. A stadium show can contain more major matches without reducing the wrestlers to people briefly walking across the screen between advertisements for an energy drink. Two nights also allow fans to see more of the roster, which is generous, provided they can still identify the roster by the end of the second evening.

There is also a commercial case, though professional wrestling has never been embarrassed by one. Two nights create two gates, two broadcasts and a long sequence of opportunities for the words ‘premium experience’ to appear beside a photograph of a folding chair.

This does not make the event less theatrical. It makes it more faithful to its subject. Wrestling has always understood that a feud is not complete when the dispute is resolved. It is complete when the dispute has been resolved, revisited, explained by video package and arranged to return after a brief message from a partner brand.

The stadium itself played its part. U.S. Bank Stadium is built to hold more than 70,000 people, all of whom can now enjoy the uniquely modern experience of participating in live sport while checking whether a developing storyline will be resolved before their ride home becomes a historical document.

For WWE, the two-night SummerSlam is a sensible evolution. WrestleMania had already demonstrated that the audience will happily divide an event across a weekend if the occasion is presented as sufficiently important and the merchandise is available in several colours.

For everyone else, it is a reminder that sports entertainment has solved a problem sport has long avoided: if a show is big, make it bigger. If it is loud, add another night. If attention remains, locate it, ticket it and place it near the ring bell.

SummerSlam will end on Sunday. WWE will then begin the painstaking task of finding a third evening, presumably after a short video package explaining why the summer was not quite slammed enough.