By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Saturday’s AEW Collision television show averaged 317,000 viewers for TNT, according to Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics.com. Collision produced a 0.09 rating in the 18-49 demo.
Powell’s POV: The previous week’s Collision aired on a Friday night opposite WWE Smackdown and had 270,000 viewers with a 0.08 rating. The combined numbers for Saturday’s three-hour Rampage and Collision block average out to 299,000 viewers with a 0.09 rating in the key demo. Rampage and Collision will return to their usual time slots this weekend.
Those WBD Raw rumors are making more sense every day. At this point it’s almost negligence by WBD execs to keep Rampage and Collision on TV.
No telling whether the rumors are true, but I’ve been talking on podcasts about this being a possibility for a long time now while also saying Tony Khan better have a fallback plan. I’ve always questioned the logic of Khan repping himself rather than hiring a top agency. If he has a fallback plan, great. If not, then he’s made a massive mistake.
The big question is if WBD will want the rights to the Network/catalogue and are they willing to pay Peacock to get access to it before the current contract is up in 2026.
Dynamite should find a landing spot if WBD goes with WWE programming, but I can’t imagine anyone willingly paying for the rights to Rampage and Collision.
From WWE’s perspective, that’s the the double whammy of this deal. They severely damage their competition and potentially create a bidding war between two of your television partners if they both want the streaming rights. One big concern for fans is that if Max were to get the streaming rights, they could end up taking a pay-per-view approach similar to the arrangement that UFC has with ESPN+.