By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite television show averaged 704,000 viewers for TBS, according to ProgrammingInsider.com. The viewership was up from last week’s average of 613,000. Dynamite finished with a 0.15 rating in the 18-49 demo, up from the previous week’s 0.11 rating in the same demo.
Powell’s POV: The HBO Max streaming numbers are not included in the rating or viewership count for AEW programming. Nice increases from the prior week. Dynamite ran against an NHL playoff game, but the show benefited from not having to face an NBA playoff game. That won’t be the case this week or next week, as Dynamite will air opposite game one and game four of the NBA Finals.
Last Tuesday’s NXT on The CW averaged 544,000 viewers and a 0.05 rating in the 18-49 demo. One year ago, on May 28, 2025, Dynamite on TBS delivered 636,000 viewers and a 0.16 rating in the 18-49 demographic for the Double or Nothing fallout show.
I still can’t figure out for the life of me if wrestling viewership numbers are good, bad, or indifferent. I feel like they’re down year over year pretty much every year. But I keep hearing both companies talk about how business is good.
You are far from alone. I include the comparison to last year out of habit more than anything. It’s not a great comparison because of the formula change with Big Data + Panel, which brought the numbers for most pro wrestling shows down. They eventually tweaked the formula and the numbers for wrestling shows improved, but then they tweaked it again and the numbers for most shows went down. It’s a mess. I’d be livid if I ran a company that pays for those numbers. There’s been frustration within the wrestling companies because the numbers make them look bad to advertisers. And then there’s the Netflix global numbers. I run them, but I don’t put a ton of stock into their numbers either. So the ratings/viewership tracking is a mess across the board. It’s ridiculous considering that the technology has to be there to quickly and accurately give them the data. More than anything, I tend to compare the numbers to more recent shows. Let’s say I’m looking at NXT numbers. Rather than look at last year, I tend to look at how the NXT episode compared to recent NXT shows that used the same formula.