The bubble was a videoconferencing crowd system and arena staging utilized for broadcasts of television shows and pay-per-view/livestreaming events of the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions.

Due to the start of the 2020–21 ECHL and NBA seasons, WWE relocated the ThunderDome to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, which began on December 11.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March 2020, the American professional wrestling promotion WWE moved the majority of its programming for their Raw and SmackDown brands to their WWE Performance Center training facility in Orlando, Florida with no fans in attendance;[1] in late May, the promotion began using Performance Center trainees to serve as the live audience,[2] which was further expanded to friends and family members of the wrestlers in mid-June.

[3] On August 17, 2020, WWE announced that they would be relocating to Orlando's Amway Center, where their episodes of Monday Night Raw (and sub-show Main Event), Friday Night SmackDown, 205 Live, and pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming events would be broadcast for a long-term period, beginning with the August 21 episode of SmackDown.

[5][6] WWE's initial residency agreement with the Amway Center expired on October 31, but with the option to extend the contract with a two weeks notice.

[8][9] On November 19, WWE announced that the ThunderDome would remain in Florida, but would be relocated to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, beginning with the December 11 episode of SmackDown.

[13] The promotion did not announce the length of their residency at Tropicana Field, but it was expected that they would eventually have to leave around March due to the start of the 2021 Tampa Bay Rays season.

[14] On March 24, WWE announced that they would relocate to the Yuengling Center, located on the campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa, beginning with the post-WrestleMania 37 episode of Raw on April 12.

[26][27] The Performance Center would become NXT's permanent home base and by June 2021, nearly all COVID restrictions were lifted with audience capacity expanded and no longer featuring virtual fans.

[29] In creating the ThunderDome, WWE partnered with a team of production companies including Quince Imaging and The Famous Group.

[30][31] Inside the ThunderDome, drones, lasers, pyro, smoke, and projections were utilized to enhance the wrestlers' entrances on a level similar to that of pay-per-view/livestreaming productions before the pandemic.

WWE Executive Vice President of Television Production, Kevin Dunn, further noted that the company was able to "do things production-wise that we could never otherwise do" prior to the ThunderDome.

Pro Wrestling Torch ran a poll on their website, and over 50% of respondents indicated that the ThunderDome was "way better" than the shows produced at the WWE Performance Center, while 23% said it was "a little better."