AEW Collision falls to record low against NXT No Mercy

Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2023/10/03/aew-collision-falls-to-record-low-against-nxt-no-mercy/

AEW Collision fell to the lowest viewership in its history on Saturday night airing against NXT No Mercy.

The September 30 episode from Seattle fell to 327,000 viewers and 106,000 (0.08) with both numbers representing the lowest among the show’s sixteen episodes, per Wrestlenomics and Sports TV Ratings.

The audience decline was 42% over last week’s program with the 18-49 audience sustaining a 55% decline.

In the key demo, male viewership was hit significantly going from 174,000 to 61,000 this week while females in the demo dropped 26% from 61,000 to 45,000.

Adults 18-34 saw a 49% decline to 43,000 viewers. This was entirely due to male viewership seeing a 58% loss as women in the demo were the only bright spot of the entire night for Collision as they increased by a minimal 2,000 viewers from last week.

Adults 35-49 declined by 58% to 63,000 viewers with men in the category falling from 102,000 to 32,000 this week.

Saturday’s cable numbers were dominated by college football including Collision airing against Duke vs. Notre Dame which averaged 5.3 million viewers a 1.18 rating in the 18-49 demographic.

However, it is clear that the dominant factor was airing against NXT No Mercy on Peacock, which included Becky Lynch wrestling in the main event against Tiffany Stratton.

This is the third WWE premium live event to air head-to-head with Collision.

Collision averaged 471,000 viewers and 164,000 in the demo against SummerSlam on August 5 and posted an average audience of 345,000 and 144,000 in the demo on September 2 against Payback.

This past Saturday’s episode included an eight-man tag main event with Bryan Danielson wrestling in Seattle, and Kenny Omega & Chris Jericho teaming for the first time on the eve of the WrestleDream pay-per-view.

Collision will air against WWE Fastlane this Saturday night.

Woof. These Collision’s the day before a PPV and against so much competition are going to struggle.

This is what I expected on Collision vs. PLE nights… thought they had exceeded expectations up until now, particularly head-to-head with Summerslam.

But throw in college football and a major market saturation for wrestling over the last five weeks or so (since All In weekend) and Collision didn’t really have a fighting chance.

I expected a low number, maybe not this low but so many hours of wrestling. I’m more surprised that TK felt they will do over 100K buys.