By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite television show averaged 609,000 viewers for TBS, according to Dave Meltzer of F4Wonline.com. The viewership count was down from the 786,000 viewership total from last week’s show.
Powell’s POV: Dynamite finished with a 0.18 rating in 18-49 demo, down from last week’s 0.26 rating in the same demo. Tuesday’s NXT finished with 468,000 viewers and a 0.15 rating on Syfy Network. The Olympics continues to be stiff competition for all pro wrestling shows and will be again next week. One year ago, the August 2, 2023 edition of Dynamite on TBS delivered 894,000 viewers and a 0.31 rating in the 18-49 demographic.
Raw beat the Olympics on USA in the “key demo” on Monday. The only reason the number was down was because it was on SyFy which is in fewer homes than USA Network.
The Olympics are not the reason why AEW’s ratings returned to their new norm after two weeks of hot shot booking.
Great, now do Smackdown’s ratings decline opposite the opening ceremonies. My God, seek help for this pathetic obsession you have. It’s not healthy.
Well actually the opening ceremonies and the tasteless display that was presented caused a lot of potential viewers to decide to tune out after that, so the Olympics as competition is not quite as formidable as it would normally be.
Not true. The Paris opening ceremony had 28.6 million viewers. The opening ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics had 17 million viewers. The Tokyo games suffered from not having people present due to the pandemic, but the opening ceremony in France also topped the Brazil games in 2016.
No, I actually said that many people have decided to tune out since and because of watching the opening ceremony; so the Smackdown vs Dynamite comparison for this past week is not a great parallel. We’ll see how Smackdown viewership numbers look following this show. The Olympics are of course day to day depending on what events are being broadcast and the level of interest any given competition generates.
Fair enough, but do a search for the Olympics ratings and you’ll find numerous headlines about how the numbers are soaring. I think a lot of people get triggered, claim they’re not going to watch something, and then watch it anyway. Obviously, some folks legitimately follow through with not watching and that’s certainly their right, but there’s just not enough to hurt viewership numbers. I’ve seen this many times with pro wrestling over the years. If I had a dime for every fan who claimed they were finished watching WWE after Vince McMahon booked something they didn’t like, I’d probably be a millionaire. I always loved it when people would make those bold “never again” claims on social media, and then you’d find the same person tweeting about the very next show.
BTW, Dynamite during the last Olympics (2021):
July 28: 1.108m
August 4: 1.102m
The week before the 2021 Olympics –
July 21: 1.148m
The week after the 2021 Olympics –
August 11: 979k
So, in the last 3 years a large chunk of the dwindling fanbase suddenly became fans of the Olympics? Can we just get one member of the “wrestling media” to stop carrying water for Tony Khan?
Raw drew 1.4m … 400k down from its norm. Did nobody know it was on a different channel? When i watch something, the channel its on doesnt matter … i watch it. So if the cool fed fans couldnt be bothered as it was on a different channel, doesnt say much for them does it. They were obviously watching the olympics instead. Raw lost more of its audience than dynamite did. And it was a crap show as well … which is why the usual starting audience (they all tuned in ) said fcuk this shit and turned off well before the end. Dynamite was a much better show than raw … sorry obsessedone
SyFy is in millions fewer homes than USA Network, and Raw still beat the Olympics on USA in the supposed key demo.