AEW - Non-Wrestling (Business, Money, Ratings etc.)

[Prime Time]

AEW: 743,000 (0.32 in 18-49)
NXT: 691,000 (0.18 in 18-49)

Oooooooooooor......... Say it with me folks: give or take the same million and a half people combined.

Beat me to it! And yeah, that's the gist of what I've been saying for ages now - and what I always said was the real test for everything that the AEW crowd were saying, way back in 2018/19. I think we're at the point where we have to consider it disproven now.

If anyone is interested in the percentages, Dynamite's rating is down -20.44%, while NXT had essentially a tie (-0.1%)

[Prime Time]

UK rating - first one of March and AEW seems to found some equilibrium in and around the 140,000 mark, with four of the last five being slightly over that.

There's about a million asterisks and caveats that I think I've mentioned before, but that does mean they are averaging out to about 1/3 of where TNA were at their most popular (if you remember when people were suggesting TNA actually come and run over here!), and probably about the same as they were at in early 2016 (when the slide that led to them losing their slot on Challenge TV began).

Year 1 - first 6 months https://www.lopforums.com/forum/pro-...ge22#post51825
Year 1 - second 6 months https://www.lopforums.com/forum/pro-...ge26#post70138

Dynamite Year 2

October
1: 149,000
2: 143,000
3. 118,000
4. 155,000
5. 123,000

November

6. 99,000
7. 143,000
8. 164,000
9. 135,000

December

10. 138,000
11. 150,000
12: 98,000
13: <100,000

January

14: <105,000
15: 115,000
16: <103,000
17: 114,000
18: 91,000


February

19: 144,000
20: 124,000
21: 145,000
22. 141,000


March

23: 143,000

[Prime Time]

AEW: 743,000 (0.32 in 18-49)
NXT: 691,000 (0.18 in 18-49)

This week:
AEW: 768,000 (+3.3%)
NXT: 597,000 (-13.6%)

Overall: 1.36 million (-4.8%)

[Benjamin Button]

I’m old enough to remember when 6 million tuned into a single night. We’ve gotten too smart and so have they. There’s no fun anymore.

[Prime Time]

I mean, at the peak of wrestling's popularity in the Monday Night Wars, the combined audience for RAW and Nitro was in the vicinity of 11-12 million. Going back further, some of the early Clash of the Champions were comparable to the peaks of Attitude Era RAW's, and they were the second promotion at the time. If you're old enough to remember SNME then some of their ratings on NBC were about the same as RAW/Nitro combined, on their best nights. The highest rating as a one off is supposed to be over 30 million, in 1988.

I guess that means NXT or AEW would have to run for a year to pull the same numbers as the peak in the Hogan era. I know it's a very different media landscape and all now, but still....

[Prime Time]

Dynamite had one of it's best UK ratings on the 12th of March, with 189,000 viewers. I don't know if this was for Christian Cage, for the Inner Circle war council, or for people tuning in to see what happened after the popcorn fart of a ring explosion. I guess it could be a bit of all three - but make your own mind up!

Year 1 - first 6 months https://www.lopforums.com/forum/pro-...ge22#post51825
Year 1 - second 6 months https://www.lopforums.com/forum/pro-...ge26#post70138

Dynamite Year 2

October
1: 149,000
2: 143,000
3. 118,000
4. 155,000
5. 123,000

November

6. 99,000
7. 143,000
8. 164,000
9. 135,000

December

10. 138,000
11. 150,000
12: 98,000
13: <100,000

January

14: <105,000
15: 115,000
16: <103,000
17: 114,000
18: 91,000


February

19: 144,000
20: 124,000
21: 145,000
22. 141,000


March

23: 143,000
24: 189,000

[Prime Time]

This week:
AEW: 768,000 (+3.3%)
NXT: 597,000 (-13.6%)

Overall: 1.36 million (-4.8%)

This week:

AEW: 757,000 (-1.4%)
NXT: 678,000 (+13.5%)

Actually quite an impressive surge for NXT if you ignore how low the rating was for the previous week. Another show well below 800k for AEW.

[Team Farrell]

[Prime Time]

Indeed. In fact, the last time they were closer to 2 million than 1.5 was I think something like the eighth week of the war (and even that was something like 1.809 million)

They've obviously never broken 2 million since the first Dynamite, when around an extra 400,000 (or a group roughly 1 third of their entire audience) gave them a chance and decided this shit wasn't for them.

[Prime Time]

It's that time of the week again. But back down to earth for the UK rating on the 19th. Watched by fewer people this time out than repeats of Hulk, Step Brothers, and Matrix: Revolutions. But to be fair 136k would have looked like a great number in January.

Year 1 - first 6 months https://www.lopforums.com/forum/pro-...ge22#post51825
Year 1 - second 6 months https://www.lopforums.com/forum/pro-...ge26#post70138

Dynamite Year 2

October
1: 149,000
2: 143,000
3. 118,000
4. 155,000
5. 123,000

November

6. 99,000
7. 143,000
8. 164,000
9. 135,000

December

10. 138,000
11. 150,000
12: 98,000
13: <100,000

January

14: <105,000
15: 115,000
16: <103,000
17: 114,000
18: 91,000


February

19: 144,000
20: 124,000
21: 145,000
22. 141,000


March

23: 143,000
24: 189,000
25: 136,000

[Prime Time]

This week:

AEW: 757,000 (-1.4%)
NXT: 678,000 (+13.5%)

Actually quite an impressive surge for NXT if you ignore how low the rating was for the previous week. Another show well below 800k for AEW.

This week:

AEW 700k
NXT 654k

Combined 1,354,000

Unimpressive however you slice it.

[Benjamin Button]

Do you think it’s the talent or the booking?

[The Cook]

I think it's just wrestling in general is less popular than it used to. I'd say 700-800k isn't bad when you consider TNA was getting 1 million or so 11 years ago as the second promotion with much bigger 'names'. At the same time Raw was getting more than 4.5 million so TNA would get about a quarter whereas Dynamite is getting half of what Raw does now and that's without the 5+ years experience TNA had.

I think without NXT they'll average 800-900k with them breaking a million here and there, maybe 5 times a year.

[Benjamin Button]

I don’t know...The wrestlers look really skinny from what I remember. They aren’t as animated when they talk, either. What are they feeding them? They do a lot of dives, though. And then the guy that has to catch them shows a lot of patience, too. I guess it’s a real mix bag. I just hope they’re eating enough.

Even if they’re not bringing as much to the gates nor are they as charismatic as generations prior, they deserve to have food on the table.

[Prime Time]

Do you think it’s the talent or the booking?

I think it's a bit of both, to be honest.

From my perspective, initially my biggest issue was with some of the talent they were using, but I've heard plenty of things over the last year or so where I've heard something and thought 'I don't even need to see that to know it's a mistake'. So I think the honest answer is that they hired the wrong people and have someone who doesn't know what he's doing in charge, and the combination of that means that even though the potential audience for wrestling is demonstrably higher than this, this is about the size of the group they can appeal to - i.e., when you factor in the people who watch on catch up, they've got around 1.25 million fans. Maybe around 2 million when you allow for people outside of North America, although of some of their international ratings have been disastrous....

So... I guess would I'd say is the philosophy that underpins both the booking and the hiring is to blame.