AEW tops 1.1 million viewers, #2 on cable behind The Challenge finale

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Originally published at AEW tops 1.1 million viewers, #2 on cable behind The Challenge finale

For the second consecutive week, AEW topped one million viewers without head-to-head competition from NXT and finishing second among all cable programming.

Wednesday’s episode that included two championship matches averaged 1,104,000 viewers and a 0.38 in the 18-49 demographic. While overall viewership fell 9.4 percent, it was still Dynamite’s third most-watched episode in its history behind the October 2019 debut and last week’s unopposed show. The 18-49 rating was AEW’s second-highest of 2021 with a 16 percent drop from last week’s 0.44.

While the only NBA competition was a game on NBA-TV, AEW went against the season finale of The Challenge on MTV, which won the night with a 0.58 in the 18-49 demo and averaged 990,000 viewers. AEW did manage to beat The Challenge among males 18-49 with a 0.50 to 0.44.

The audience AEW retained most was adults over 50, which only fell by 4 percent this week with a 0.48 after last week’s all-time AEW record of 0.50 among that audience. It would suggest those finding the show last week are sticking around and will enhance AEW’s overall viewership if this trend continues.

AEW did lose significant amounts with its 18-34 audience dropping by 35 percent and men 12-34 down by the same percentage, which could be attributed to The Challenge.

Here is a breakdown of the key demos:

Source: Showbuzz Daily

ADULTS 18-49
This week: 0.37 (-16 percent)

FEMALES 18-49
This week: 0.25 (-22 percent)

MALES 18-49
This week: 0.50 (-9 percent)

ADULTS 18-34
This week: 0.17 (-35 percent)

FEMALES 12-34
This week: 0.14 (-26 percent)

MALES 12-34
This week: 0.15 (-35 percent)

ADULTS 25-54
This week: 0.45 (-10 percent)

ADULTS 50+
This week: 0.48 (-4 percent)

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Down??? Oh man, bankruptcy can’t be far behind.

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Adults 18-34 dropping 35 percent should be noted. Young adults are the most important right…? Or do we pretend that 35-49 are the true young adults?

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Another solid consistent number. Could Blood and Guts outdraw RAW that week?

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Just to kind of look at what they still need to get there - they may need a little under the combined current viewerships of AEW and NXT to do that.

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True, but also keep in mind that RAW’s numbers could dip. The Mania buzz is over and this is usually around the time a lot of people drop off.

Personally, this whole wrestling on every day of the week thing has killed my interest in RAW. Just too much other good stuff to make it through that slog

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Is AEW still at 1.1M next week? Works both ways.

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No it won’t.

Wouldn’t shock me if suddenly a Wrestlemania highlight show was scheduled for that Wednesday or something to counter it for a week

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Let’s see what Raw’s rating is next week, if there is a sudden drop, then things could get interesting.

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Good number, they were bound to drop a bit from last weeks number, there was no chance they were going to keep all those new viewers. I said this last week, and I’ll say it again, right now means nothing, what will matter is where they are a month or two down the road as that is when we will see if they retained a significant percentage of those new viewers.

I would say that if they stay above 1mil it’s a win, if they fall back into the 900K range, it’s a missed opportunity. Time will tell, but I’m pulling for them.

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The thing is, Raw is at the beginning of the week. If burnout was going to be a factor, I would think Dynamite or Smackdown would feel it more. Though Raw is the shiftiest show of the week by a mile.

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Hopefully AEW does draw in more viewers than Raw. It doesn’t make much sense to compare viewership of shows on different nights (especially when it’s Monday v. a random midweek night) and pretend they’re in direct competition against each other, and it’s not because I have any sort of love for AEW but Raw definitely deserves the numbers to reflect its lack of quality and even though it doesn’t make much sense, the negative attention they’d get for AEW “beating” them would be good.

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I think Wai said it best… If after three or four weeks they are keeping above 1M a week, and that’s their new ballpark, then no longer is it a random occurence, but the start of a trend.

My guess would be if they can stick over 1M until through Blood & Guts, and maybe bring in some new viewers on that episode, than we’re looking at 1M as the base.

I also think automatically, numbers will increase 10-15% the moment they are in front of “real” crowds again, perhaps this Summer. People will stop and watch if the AEW crowds can keep it up when they’re back on the road. If you look back at last January and February’s Dynamite episodes, those crowds looked like a party every week. I feel like that is all but forgotten now. I really think that will a jump spurred by that.

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I have always maintained that hardcore fans underestimate how much crowds matter. I am in my late 30s and have watched countless hours of wrestling every single week since I was a kid, and even I struggle with all shows right now to a degree. I couldn’t agree with you more.

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