By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite television show averaged 681,000 viewers for TBS, according to Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics.com. The viewership count was down from the 790,000 viewership total from last week’s show.
Powell’s POV: Dynamite finished with a 0.23 rating in 18-49 demo, down from last week’s 0.28 rating in the same demo. Dynamite ran against the third game of the NBA Finals. Tuesday’s NXT finished with 718,000 viewers and a 0.22 rating on USA Network without NBA or NHL competition. In other words, NXT gets the viewership win that comes with an asterisk. The numbers were getting closer in recent weeks, so it will be interesting to see what both shows do once the NBA and NHL competition is over. One year ago, the June 14, 2023 edition of Dynamite on TBS delivered 832,000 viewers and a 0.30 rating in the 18-49 demographic.
No asterisk at all. The flagship show for one company lost to a developmental program.
Why does everyone always use the excuse of ” This NBA,NHL,Pickleball game” was the reason the show did badly? Every year they have gone up against major sports and the numbers have gone down each year. If a show was good, people would tune in. There are a lot of wrestling fans that don’t really care about other sports. It just seems like a convenient excuse.
There’s a reason why WWE opted to put Cody on NXT this week. NXT faced no competition, AEW had NBA Finals competition, and they correctly thought they could top AEW in the viewership. In other words, both companies are well aware of the impact that major sporting events and other programming will have on their numbers. Are there times when pro wrestling shows hold up well against that type of competition? Sure. But to make it seem like a garbage excuse is just not accurate. See Raw’s numbers during Monday Night Football season.
WWE has been sending main roster people down to NXT for the last year or so. This is nothing new. They didn’t do it for any reason other than they’ve been doing it as part of their overall approach these days.
Also, NXT ratings were DOWN this week, just not nearly as much as AEW. Cody wasn’t there last week and they pulled 50k more viewers than this week.
The last 3 NXT shows have had better ratings than this latest Dynamite episode, so pretending it was because of some stunt is just laughable.
To say they didn’t bring in Cody for this show because NXT had no major competition and AEW did is ridiculous. Do you think they brought him in because someone came up with the cookout line? It was strategic and there’s nothing wrong with that. Going into the show, I said on Wade Keller’s podcast that whatever happened this week happened. I’m more interested in what these shows do when neither has strong competition because NXT has been closing the gap. I’ll be more impressed if NXT tops AEW in viewership when all things are equal, which they have been getting closer to doing. So please stop trying to make up issues that exist only in your mind.
That rights fee increase is gonna be huge huge I tell you. They shouldn’t put anything against Dynamite. It’s just not fair. All other channels should just go black for those 2 hours. This can all be blamed on the NBA. It has nothing to do with crappy booking or bringing out random interchangeable Japanese wrestlers and luchadors that most fans in the states have no clue who they are excepts for the sickos that Khan writes for