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

[Prime Time]

Dynamite (9/29): 1,152,000 (-10%)
Rampage (10/1): 622,000 (-2%)


Obviously not been keeping up with the UK ratings to the same degree lately but the most recent one I can currently see was broadcast on the 24th (and that means it was probably the 22nd episode that did 1.2 million in the US) and it looks like it's in the same kind of ballpark, around 102,000. Only 37,000 of that was live with the other 65,000 'time shifted', or viewed on a different day from the live broadcast.)

[Prime Time]

Bringing this up to date, even though judging by the activity in the rest of this subforum I'm not sure how many people here are still watching AEW.

Dynamite 10/6: 1,050,000 (-8.8%)
Rampage 10/8: 502,000 (-19.2%)

Slower week all round, but that nearly 20% drop for Rampage really stands out. I have to think there's something external to cause that, because the audience was small and fairly already.

[Team Farrell]

Man, Tony Khan is a pathetic nerd. Do a victory lap when you've done more than beat a show that was moved to a new network for a night with less availability than yours by .02 in a demo. Someone needs to give that coke head a swirly.

[Benjamin Button]

Did AEW do a higher rating or did they only do higher with men from 18-49? The water was so muddy in the report that I read that I could not tell what was going on.

[Prime Time]

Just the demo. About 45,000 people in that 18-49 bracket, give or take.

Rampage itself got 578,000 (+15%), whereas Smackdown did 866,000.

I guess the message for this might be that AEW is clearly the choice of the younger audience, but that the wrestling audience is skewing older to a far greater degree and AEW aren't making new fans at enough of a rate to replace the older ones. So barring a change in that, as niche as wrestling seems to us now (especially those of us who remember the peaks of Hogan and Austin etc), it's probably twenty years away from being doubly as niche as it is currently.

[Benjamin Button]

Also wwe has the kid audience.

[Team Farrell]

See, this is something that I don't understand. Ratings from Nielson would indicate that WWE's audience skews into their 40s and 50s. But a crowd shot from any of their events would indicate that the audience is largely people in their 30s, many or most of whom have children.

There's an incongruency there that doesn't quite make sense to me. Are people shelling out $50-$100 per seat to bring themselves and two kids to see a product live that they don't watch otherwise? Or is something about the Nielson system not quite adding up?

I'm not implying that there are more people watching than the ratings indicate. But there's some way these young families are consuming the product that isn't reflected in the ratings. I can tell you my girlfriend's kids watch the shit out of wrestling matches on YouTube, would go to a show live, but don't have the attention span to sit through a three hour episode of Raw on TV. So are all these young families consuming WWE entirely through short clips on YouTube?

[PEN15v2]

Youtube, but also I don't think 40-50 are as comfortable going to live shows. Covid or not, the older people get, the less interested they are in gatherings like this. I used to go to every concert I could afford. I just turned 40, and now I don't go to shows I have to stand the whole time, or I'm picky about the venue... attending live things is a young person's game.

[Prime Time]

Although the biggest share of the WWE audience is 50+, on any given week 20-25% of the crowd is the kids. I imagine the rest are watching via YouTube or other online channels. Which in itself doesn't bode all that well for the future, given how central the TV rights are to the current business model.

[Benjamin Button]

Isn’t cherry picking the key demographic instead of talking overall ratings kind of living in a fantasy land?

If WWE was concerned about that one demo only, they’d be doing an edgier product.

[Prime Time]

There's a business rationale rather than pure cherry picking, but it does mean ignoring the best metric for popularity (and, if ratings demonstrate anything in this regard, quality).

[PEN15v2]

It's an important metric, and it's not like WWE is ignoring it. AEW is definitely a success by working towards that demo. So, I wouldn't call it cherry pciking.

If anything is cherry picking, it's the way TK went after WWE during the week towards the show, claiming they'd beat SD while they were on a network with less reach, and losing in every demo but a single one, and then barely sneaking the win in that category.

Like I said, AEW is a success by going after this market. And this market is "apparently" one of the most immature groups of people possible, as they love being catered to, and claiming their preferred brand "won" because of a popularity contest of a small portion of everyone reached. It was silly from the moment Tony opened his mouth, to the time he claimed the win.

But, in the end, if AEW fans enjoyed that show and others, then who the fuck cares?

[Prime Time]

Been a while since I've been in the loop here. Here's a quick catch-up of all the latest ratings.

Rampage 10/15: 578,000 (+15%)
Dynamite 10/16: 727,000 (-30%)
Rampage 10/22: 533,000 (-7.7%)
Dynamite 10/23: 575,000 (-20.9%)
Dynamite 10/27: 941,000 (+63.6%)
Rampage 10/29: 623,000 (+16.8%)


They'll welcome that return to form for Dynamite, though it's still 10% on their last Wednesday effort, so none of this really makes for amazing reading. It's more relief than anything. Rampage seems to be on a major slide right now (the odd week aside) and they could do with some good news on that front in the set of numbers that come out today.

[Prime Time]

Dynamite 11/3: 878,000 (-6.6%)
Rampage 11/5: 599,000 (-3.8%)
Dynamite 11/10: 913,000 (+3.9%)

Fairly stable the last week or so.

[Prime Time]

Gave up keeping track of the ratings a while back, haven't heard any reason to think there's been much of a change.

Interesting titbit from the British ratings though, with the Rampage from 15th Feb doing a slightly bigger number than the following Dynamite.