AEW Dynamite averaged 913,000 viewers on TNT with a 0.42 rating in the 18-49 demographic that translates to 543,000 viewers in the demo.
AEW experienced an increase of 28.6 percent in viewership and improved by 61.5 percent in the key demo. It was AEW’s highest audience running head-to-head with NXT since September 2nd and their highest 18-49 figure since November 13, 2019.
NXT countered with its TakeOver: War Games go-home show that averaged 658,000 viewers and a 0.16 in the 18-49 demo, which converts to 210,000 viewers.
NXT was down 7.6 percent in viewers and decreased by 20 percent in the key demo.
In Canada, AEW averaged 108,500 viewers on TSN2 with 57,400 in the 25-54 demographic. They were fourth for the day in sports programming trailing the NFL and SportsCentre.
Because Showbuzz Daily has not released its rating information, we don’t have a breakdown yet of the key demographics.
Is it really? They gave away probably their biggest match and still just scraped 900k. Just reinforces they have a hardcore 750k and on occasion can pull in 150k who would be watching NXT.
If they don’t have any aspirations to actually grow their viewership then yes, they are meeting their goals.
And what is your evidence that “even now Sting is a massive draw and massive star”? As much as I am a Sting fan, and I’ll venture to say I was a fan of him long before you, he was never a massive draw. No doubt Sting was extremely popular, particularly during WCW’s boom, but take away the NWO and I doubt that boom would have ever occurred i.e. Sting was never the catalyst for increased audiences.
As NXT has shown us, a great number when you give away a huge match is not (necessarily) indicative of anything in terms of long-term trends.
Having said that, AEW was smarter than NXT in that they knew they’d have a big number and they used it to debut Sting in front of 900k viewers instead of 700k.
This rating had nothing to do with Sting. He was a complete surprise. Nobody tuned in to see Sting. They tuned in for a PPV level show main evented by Mox vs Omega.
To see if Sting is still a draw we will have to wait and see what the ratings do from here.
Just look at the YouTube numbers for Sting, there is a ton of interest of him. Also his merch set a record on PWTees. He’s clearly a draw and a money maker with that evidence
Yeah I wonder if they had really hinted hard that Sting was going to be a surprise on the show, if more viewers would have tuned in. Not saying they should have advertised Sting cause the surprise was amazing, but makes you wonder would the number have been higher.
What would have been smart would have been to have advertised Sting’s appearance in advance. If he can still attract eyeballs then it would have resulted in a bigger number.
Think of this week as the announcement that he will be on next week’s show. It’s not like he had an unadvertised match or even a promo. It was basically the equivalent of a promo package.
It made sense in WWE because it made zero difference. I doubt announcing Sting’s appearance in advance would have made any difference to WWE Network subscriber numbers as most people who want to watch WWE major cards already subscribe.
Had it been during the PPV days then that would have been a different ball game and not announcing him in advance would have been the wrong decision as it was in this case.
A big Sting fan is going to watch his advertised AEW appearance next week even if they saw this one on YouTube yesterday instead of live on Wednesday.
With the Omega/Mox title match already happening, Sting (if advertised) may not have been a huge extra ratings bump this week. But next week’s show with Sting’s advertised appearance will probably do better than a “normal” show would have. The fact that he was a surprise this week won’t hurt at all.
Two big bites of the apple instead of one gigantic one.
Not only is showing up unannounced in-line withbwhat the character would do, but AEW’s execution of Sting’s debut was done extremely well.
We got a legitimate memorable moment in a business where those are happening far less frequently than they have in years past. And we got that moment on a show w/a big title match, the Impact tease, and a ton of positive buzz comung out of it for AEW.
Will this translate to more eyeballs on the screen? No one knows…But I think it will help. The fact that they’ve maintained their ratings in the midst of this trash year is a net plus, in my book. We’ll get a better gauge of their popularity & growth once the country’s out of the woods in terms of the pandemic (same for WWE ratings & TV in general).
But numbers aside, it was easily one of the coolest wrestling moments of 2020, and a fun night to be a fan.
I gotta agree here, leaving the debut unannounced is not only something Sting’s character would do but how it was done leaves a cliff hanger making people want to see next week, plus draws in the nostalgic fan base in that doesn’t watch weekly or goes to NXT over AEW.
Doing his debut on a show featuring a title match that was already going to add to viewership, add in the angle at the end of the show and that NXT next week will be a hangover episode after Take Over, which usually isn’t that great of an episode, AEW next week could set their highest viewership of 2020 again.
When it comes to product marketing, this was a well planned out strategy, great execution and we will wait and how much this moment pays off for AEW.
