WWE makes major change to traditional Royal Rumble rules ahead of annual match

This year's WWE Royal Rumble has been billed as the biggest in history, with over 67,000 fans attending the show at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The Women's Rumble match kicked off the premium live event, and ahead of the match, ring announcer Alicia Taylor was on hand to share the rules.

Traditionally, there are only 90 seconds between each entrant, but the company changed this year to make the match longer, with a gap between participants of two minutes.

That means that each Rumble will be at least an hour long before the end of the match is able to be wrapped up.

It will be interesting to see how the men and women can fill the gap now that they have an extra 30 seconds to fill between getting into the ring and ensuring that they are able to get all of their spots in.

There was speculation that this would be the biggest Royal Rumble of all time, leading to WWE making the matches 40-person for the first time since 2011. However, this doesn't seem to be the case.

Stephanie McMahon was on hand to welcome the WWE Universe to the show, but there was no announcement change for either of the Rumble bouts.