First-time we played before large crowd on July 16, it was up 42% increase in 18 to 49 demo, which was extraordinary, Raw of 15% as well.
The NFL saw media rights increase of 79%, the NHL more than tripled its media rights AAV and Major League Baseball is getting a higher per game rate as part of its new Disney deal.
The top Spanish soccer division, La Liga, closed an eight-year deal with Disney in the United States with an estimated AAV of $175 million, which represents a 35% increase from their prior deal with ESPN.
Also in this quarter, private equity from RedBird Capital announced that it was acquiring a 15% stake in an Indian Premier League cricket team valuing the team between $250 million and $300 million.
Since moving to Peacock, viewership of our pay-per-view events have increased with Backlash up 26%, Hell In A Cell up 25%, and Money In The Bank up 46% from the prior year performance on what was the stand-alone WWE Network.
Our merchandise sales for that night almost 50% greater than they were for our last event in Houston.
Our merchandise sales for that night, almost the 100% greater than they were for our last event in the area.
The very next night, Monday, July 19 at American Airlines in Dallas, just down the road from Fort Worth, with a highest paid attendance in Dallas in over three years, our merchandise sales for that night almost 50% greater than they were at our last 2019 event in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Our merchandise sales for that night over 60% greater than they were at our last event in Cleveland.
That same night, this past Friday, we also made our first-ever appearance for either our Raw or SmackDown brands at a music festival in the U.S. Rolling Loud, the preeminent hip-hop music festival, which was in Miami, over 230,000 paid attendees over the course of that three-day event, two WWE matches including our SmackDown women's champion, Bianca Belair coming off of her and Sasha Banks' ESPY win for best WWE moment in front of over 75,000 fans on Friday night, almost all under the age of 25.
This was the highest-grossing non-televised live event gate in WWE history in Pittsburgh, 95% of tickets sold.
Our merchandise sales for that night, more than 25% greater than they were at our last event in Pittsburgh.
Our merchandise sales for that night, more than 25% greater than they were at our last event in Louisville.
This is our highest grossing WWE non-pay-per-view event in Kansas City in 14 years.
Our merchandise sales for that night were almost 50% greater than they were at our last Kansas City event.
Also, as you may recall, as part of our 2021 Live Events Calendar, we announced that SummerSlam would be taking place for the first time from an NFL stadium, from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on a Saturday night, August 21.
Without a main event or even a card announced, we have sold over 40,000 of 45,000 tickets and we'll have a record gate for a non-WrestleMania event.
From Rolling Loud, which I previously mentioned, Bianca Belair also announced with Atlanta Hawks Superstar, Trae Young that we'll be having a New Year's Day pay-per-view this January 1, again, a Saturday from State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta expects over 300,000 visitors for New Year's weekend.
Another area where we are growing and believe we will continue to grow as our sponsorship business, Stephanie and our global sales and sponsorship team have delivered over 20 new and existing sponsors so far in 2021 with many of them Blue Chip companies and executed on a number of innovative activations that really only can be done by WWE.
So far, there have been over 9 million views of the TikTok announcement and thousands of submissions.
From a production standpoint, WWE applied key learnings and techniques from producing virtual and physical television to upgrade our audio and visual experience, including the use of a 40-foot-tall by 80 foot wide state of the art curved LCD display for superstar entrances.
As Vince was mentioning earlier, the July 16 episode of SmackDown generated a 21% year-over-year increase in total viewers and a 42% increase in the coveted 18 to 49 demo.
Similarly, the July 19 episode of Raw generated an 8% year-over-year increase in total viewers and a 15% increase in the 18 to 49 demo.
From that time to the end of the second quarter, Raw ratings have increased modestly and SmackDown ratings have increased 7%.
Since the return of our live audience, however, Raw ratings are up 22% in the 18 to 49 demo and SmackDown ratings are up 20%.
In the quarter, digital consumption increased 5% to a quarterly record of 394 million hours and video views increased 13% to 11.2 billion as compared to a prior-year period that benefited from COVID-19 related viewing trends.
We saw solid performance for A&E's WWE biographies and Most Wanted Treasures series increasing A&E's Sunday night performance by 90% in the 18 to 49 demo and increasing total viewership by 21%.
Additionally, WWE sales and sponsorship revenue increased 43% year-over-year.
In addition to generating over 0.5 billion growth impressions, we saw 25 million content views across digital and social and three of the 14 trending topics from that night were directly tied to the integration.
The cultural impact and disruption during and after WrestleMania Backlash played a significant role in the film's quicker sent to becoming one of the top 10 most-watched movies in Netflix history.
In the quarter, we also released our 2020 community impact report to nearly 5,000 global partners.
The report highlighted our various initiatives through the pandemic including generating 12.5 million in kind media value and over 650 million impressions for our community partners as WWE continues to deliver on our mission of putting smiles on people's faces.
Total WWE revenue was $265.6 million, an increase of 19% reflecting the increased monetization of content across platforms, including growth from the staging of WrestleMania with ticketed fans in attendance.
Adjusted OIBDA declined 7% with $68.1 million, primarily due to higher television production expenses associated with the staging of WWE ThunderDome and to a lesser extent WrestleMania at Raymond James Stadium, both of which were produced in our performance center a year ago.
The related severance expense of $8.1 million dollars has been excluded from adjusted OIBDA as a material non-recurring item.
Looking at the WWE Media segment adjusted OIBDA was $86.2 million, a decline of 5% as increased revenue and profit from WWE's licensing agreement with Peacock and the escalation of core content rights fees were more than offset by increased production expenses.
Despite what continue to be a challenging environment, WWE produced a significant amount of content, more than 680 hours in the quarter across television, streaming and social platforms.
While our operating results continue to be impacted by the year-over-year increase in production expenses, associated with live streaming nearly 1,000 live virtual fans into our show, we also continue to achieve greater production efficiencies relative to our own expectations.
Live events adjusted OIBDA was $1.1 million, increasing $5.3 million due to an 8 times increase in revenue with the staging of WrestleMania.
This premiere event entertained ticketed fans and an audience of over 50,000.
During the quarter WWE generated approximately $13 million in free cash flow, declining $54 million primarily due to the timing of collections associated with network revenue and to a lesser extent lower operating performance.
During the second quarter, WWE returned approximately $28 million of capital to shareholders including $19 million in share repurchases and $9 million in dividends paid.
To-date, more than $177 million of stock has been repurchased, representing approximately 35% of the authorization under our $500 million repurchase program.
As of June 30, 2021, WWE held approximately $443 million in cash and short-term investments.
Debt totaled $220 million including $198 million associated with WWE's convertible notes.
The company has not drawn down on its revolving line of credit and estimates relative debt capacity of approximately $200 million.
In January, WWE issued adjusted OIBDA guidance of $270 million to $305 million for the full year 2021.
For 2021, we've estimated total capex of $85 million to $105 million to begin construction as well as to enhance WWE's production and technology infrastructure.
The total net cost of the Company's new headquarters through completion and net of tenant incentive tax credits and other capital offsets is estimated within a range of $160 million to $180 million.

Summary:
Total WWE revenue was $265.6 million, an increase of 19% reflecting the increased monetization of content across platforms, including growth from the staging of WrestleMania with ticketed fans in attendance.