SummerSlam (2024)

The 2024 SummerSlam, also promoted as SummerSlam: Cleveland, is an upcoming professional wrestling event produced by WWE. It will be the 37th annual SummerSlam and is scheduled to take place on Saturday, August 3, 2024, at Cleveland Browns Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio. The event will air via pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming, and will feature wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. This will be the second SummerSlam event to emanate from Cleveland, after the 1996 event, which was held at the Gund Arena (now known as Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse).

Background
SummerSlam is an annual professional wrestling event traditionally held in August by WWE since 1988. Dubbed "The Biggest Party of the Summer", it is one of the promotion's five biggest events of the year, along with WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series, and Money in the Bank, referred to as the "Big Five". Out of the five, it is considered WWE's second biggest event of the year behind WrestleMania.

Announced on March 12, 2024, the 37th SummerSlam is scheduled to be held on Saturday, August 3, 2024, at Cleveland Browns Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio and feature wrestlers from the Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. As part of SummerSlam week, the August 2 episode of Friday Night SmackDown will be held at the nearby Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse with a number of events to be held in Cleveland during the week prior to and after SummerSlam. This will subsequently be the second SummerSlam held in Cleveland, after the 1996 event, which was held at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse when the venue was still known as the Gund Arena.

Broadcast outlets
SummerSlam will be broadcast live on traditional pay-per-view worldwide and will also livestream on Peacock in the United States, Disney+ Hotstar in Indonesia, Disney+ in the Philippines, Binge in Australia, Abema in Japan, SonyLIV in India, and the WWE Network in all other countries. In January 2024, WWE announced that all of the WWE Network content would move to Netflix in all countries where the former is still available as a standalone service starting in January 2025, making the 2024 event the final SummerSlam to livestream on the WWE Network.

Storylines
The card will include matches that result from scripted storylines. Results are predetermined by WWE's writers on the Raw and SmackDown brands, while storylines are produced on WWE's weekly television programs, Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown.

On May 23, 2024, during an appearance at the WWE Experience attraction in Saudi Arabia, WWE Chief Content Officer Paul "Triple H" Levesque announced that the winners of both the King of the Ring and Queen of the Ring tournaments would receive a match for the world championship of their respective brand at SummerSlam. At King and Queen of the Ring two days later, Raw's Gunther and SmackDown's Nia Jax won the respective tournaments, thus earning matches for the World Heavyweight Championship, held by Damian Priest, and the WWE Women's Championship, held by Bayley, respectively.

In mid-2023 after Rhea Ripley cost Liv Morgan the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship, the two were scheduled for a match, however, the match never began as Ripley viciously attacked Morgan with a steel chair, injuring Morgan's shoulder and taking her out for several months. Morgan made her return at the 2024 Royal Rumble in January, and embarked on a "revenge tour", with her goal to take the Women's World Championship from Ripley due to Ripley taking months of her career. On the April 8 episode of Raw, Morgan attacked Ripley backstage, which legitimately injured Ripley's right arm and forced her to vacate the championship, ending Ripley's record-tying 380 day reign. Over the next few weeks, Morgan began to display more villainous traits. At King and Queen of the Ring, Morgan won the Women's World Championship after accidental interference from Ripley's onscreen love interest, "Dirty" Dominik Mysterio. Morgan then began trying to seduce Dominik, believing him to have intentionally assisted her in her victories, though members of Dominik's stable The Judgment Day attempted to keep the two separated. On the July 8 episode of Raw, Morgan and Dominik teamed up to defeat the Latino World Order (Rey Mysterio and Zelina Vega). The two celebrated Dominik's first win over his father and Dominik almost gave in and kissed Morgan, but Ripley made a surprise return and Morgan ran off while Ripley confronted Dominik. The following week, Ripley called out Morgan and challenged her to a match at SummerSlam for the Women's World Championship. Morgan appeared on the screen and accepted the challenge.

At WrestleMania XL in April, Cody Rhodes defeated Roman Reigns in a Bloodline Rules match to win the Undisputed WWE Championship, despite The Bloodline's efforts of preventing Rhodes from winning. Following the event, The Bloodline's leader Reigns and fellow member The Rock took a hiatus while Solo Sikoa became the acting leader, subsequently kicking Jimmy Uso out of the group and adding The Tongans (Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa) and Jacob Fatu to The Bloodline. The group's manager Paul Heyman was also later kicked out after he refused to acknowledge Sikoa as the new Tribal Chief of The Bloodline. At Money in the Bank, The Bloodline (Sikoa, Fatu, and Tama) defeated Rhodes, Kevin Owens, and Randy Orton in a six-man tag team match with Sikoa pinning Rhodes On the following SmackDown, The Bloodline talked about their win when Rhodes interrupted and said he knew Sikoa wanted a match for the Undisputed WWE Championship at SummerSlam and accepted the challenge. The Bloodline then attacked him and fended off an attack by Orton before powerbombing Orton through the commentator's table.