All Elite Wrestling tops NXT by a wide margin with 940,000 viewers

General
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Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/01/16/all-elite-wrestling-tops-nxt-by-a-wide-margin-with-940000-viewers/

Viewership figures for All Elite Wrestling and NXT were consistent with their performances from last week with another solid victory on the AEW side topping 900,000 viewers for the third consecutive week.

Wednesday’s edition of AEW Dynamite averaged 940,000 viewers on the TNT for the ‘Bash at the Beach’ themed show from Coral Gables, Florida. It was nearly flat with last week’s viewership average of 947,000.

Conversely, NXT averaged 700,000 viewers on the USA Network, a minor drop from the 720,000 they attracted last week for an episode headlined by a women’s battle royal to set up Rhea Ripley’s next challenger at TakeOver: Portland next month.

AEW won all the key demos except for adults over 50, which NXT narrowly won by a margin of 0.35 to 0.34. That demographic has always been NXT’s domain since the two shows launched last year.

In the key 18-49 demo, it was AEW posting a 0.38 to NXT’s 0.21. Both programs saw an increase in that category from the week prior compared to 0.36 and 0.19 respectively.

AEW saw increases in every demo from last week excluding adults over 50 that dropped from 0.36 to 0.34.

Next week will be an interesting experiment as AEW will air its first tape-delayed edition of Dynamite with matches from the Chris Jericho Rock ‘N’ Rager at Sea, which will be taped the day prior and presumably, there will be spoilers out there. They have announced Chris Jericho, Santana & Ortiz vs. Jurassic Express, and an AEW tag title match with Frankie Kazarian & Scorpio Sky defending against Kenny Omega & Hangman Page.

NXT will have their usual live show next Wednesday from Full Sail University featuring Roderick Strong vs. Keith Lee for the North American title and the continuation of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic.

Here is a breakdown of this week’s demos (a full breakdown of NXT’s demos were not available last week, so we only have fluctuations listed for AEW this week):

Adults 18-49
AEW: 0.38 (+5.5%)
NXT: 0.21

Females 18-49
AEW: 0.26 (+13%)
NXT: 0.16

Males 18-49
AEW: 0.51 (+4%)
NXT: 0.26

Adults 18-34
AEW: 0.24 (+9%)
NXT: 0.14

Females 12-34
AEW: 0.18 (+12.5%)
NXT: 0.09

Males 12-34
AEW: 0.26 (+13%)
NXT: 0.13

Adults 25-54
AEW: 0.42 (+2%)
NXT: 0.24

Adults 50+
AEW: 0.34 (-5.5%)
NXT: 0.35

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Yeah next week on the boat will be interesting. You have to give AEW credit for at least trying to change up the look of the show. Weeks and weeks and weeks of Full Sail adds to the staleness of NXT

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Too bad. I really thought this episode of NXT was perfect. They deserve better.

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Meltzer said on Observer Radio that there will be a show where they stop in the Bahamas to do matches in an arena. He wasn’t sure if that is where Dynamite is tapped or just another random match day

Also it should be noted head to head give or take the NBA game started at 7 and ended at 9:30 AEW beat the first basketball game between Philadelphia and Brooklyn Two pretty big markets in overall and 18-49 rating.

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They could always move to another night.

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AEW is a lot closer to WWE main roster’s presentation of wrestling though. People can watch it and feel comfortable with what they’re seeing while pretending they’re rebelling against mainstream wrestling…

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Obviously Brandi is the draw…more of her in the ring.

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I love NXT but this wasn’t their week

Nothing of consequence happened

The Dusty classic is stupid and pointless. Who cares who wins?

Why do I care about Worlds collide exactly?

I knew Shayna wasn’t winning (main roster for RR) and I know Io is the WM match probably. So did I really care if Bianca or Candice won just to lose?

It just didn’t have anything of consequence on it. It was technically a good show but it needed more stakes

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Just remember it’s a marathon not a sprint.

But really, how great what it be if NXT moved to Thursday? Would fit in perfectly especially on PPV weekends.

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Kinda bummed if that’s the case. I was looking forward to see what the setup would be like on Jericho’s cruise, if it would’ve been similar to last year’s. But if they do that, why did they also tape the 1/28 episode of Dark on Wednesday night with next week’s?

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It would actually fit in really poorly with PPV weekends, because NXT isn’t shot in location so they would be at Full Sail putting on the show and then traveling to the PPV. So not sure why that helps anything with the PPV. Seems like you don’t know how long a marathon really is. We haven’t even reached the 1 year mark. Not saying NXT will triumph in the end but I don’t really see them thinking there is a ton of value moving nights. They obviously want to impact the live audience for AEW. If they had wanted to have their best shot at high ratings they would have taken the Smackdown night the week smackdown moved to Friday, try to get some people with the Tuesday viewing habits. At this point I don’t think moving helps all that much. I think they would stand a good chance of hurting themselves more than helping. Unless the argument is that people watching aren’t consuming WWE other products but are consuming AEW. Otherwise if they are consuming the other shows, asking for 4 nights of live viewing might be a stretch.

If WWE truly wanted to “ win” the best thing they could do is cancel NXT let HHH take over one of the other brands, make one the Vince brand and one the HHH brand, then split the top NXT stars to their best roles. So basically combine the Vince stuff on RAW (wedding etc) with smackdown, then add NXT to RAW and run it like NXT. Basically have NXT matches and booking, but include your big stars like Bryan, Seth, KO.

If this whole exercise has shown me anything it is that wrestling fans want the stars they already know. Jericho, DDP, MOX, Survivor series cross over. They don’t care about 2 guys they don’t know no matter how good the match is.

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I meant it would help on PPV weekends, the bigger ones like Rumble, Mania or Summerslam. NXT needs a fresher look once in a while, they’ve had basically the same look forever.

And to me, the war is basically almost over. WWE tried to prevent AEW from establishing themselves by putting their third brand against Dynamite, and not only have they lost the numbers game nearly every week, AEW signed an multi-year extension with TNT. So HHH/Vince’s goal of dominating the wrestling world or whatever has failed.

The only way NXT can win is by promoting main roster stars so maybe we see more of that.

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I mean they are still dominating. AEW still gets less than half the views of the main WWE shows. They never had control over whether TNT would renew Dynamite. NXT has kept viewing numbers lower than they might otherwise be, and has exposed NXT to more people that it otherwise might have been. At the same time they are out earning AEW with NXT (based on TV contract). We can talk about them not dominating when a good night for AEW is close to a bad night for Raw.

I disagree with it helping those weekends as those weekends have Takeover shows so what if they are Thursday do you think people are showing up Thursday watching NXT, then Smackdown, Then Takeover, then PPV, then RAW? I honestly think that is overload for most people. I don’t think many people would do 5 WWE shows in a row.

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The war will be over when Vince McMahon brings on Tony Khan and humiliates him onscreen like he did to Eric. It may take 5 years or 10 years but we know the outcome

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That won’t happen, Kahn in this story is Ted Turner not Eric Bishoff. It would be more likely that he brings in the Elite. Either way I don’t think that will happen so long as AEW doesn’t implode like WCW.

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In three months AEW has almost got half of WWE’s viewers. Year-to-year WWE viewers are down a lot, so I wouldn’t call it dominating at all. And if NXT had destroyed AEW in the ratings, which was probably Vince/HHH’s goal, then TNT may not have renewed. Bottom line is that Dynamite is a success despite WWE putting NXT against it to try and hurt it.

I just think NXT could run a small show with a different setting in a new city to freshen it out. The TV product just feels really stale and the new look would help that.

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The Khans have WAY more money than Vince.

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I disagree on it feeling stale, the issue right now is Worlds collide putting better stories on hold, not the venue. Like Raw does feel fresh week to week because they are in a new city.

AEWs average viewership is less than half of a bad week for RAW it is about 1/3rd of an average week. That is one show. Add Smackdown and you are looking at 5 million views a week vs 800-900k. (Using live ratings because I haven’t seen 7 day for WWE stuff). It is funny to say “The war is over because AEW usually beats NXT by 100-200k.” But when RAW beats AEW by 1.5 million that isn’t domination. AEW has a foot hold, they are doing well, but they aren’t Monday Nitro. Not yet. I don’t think WWE is going to panic, move nights or the like. Lately whichever side has advertised the bigger show has won the night. WWE made a mistake with their end of the year awards show because they were winning the end of 2019 with the 12/18 head to head shows, then won unopposed on Christmas. But gave up momentum on New Years, and have not recovered because the worlds collide stuff isn’t hot. No one cares about NXT UK.

AEW is doing fine, and they have achieved what they wanted a long term contract. That said if not for NXT maybe they average 1.5 million viewers live and get $100 million a year instead of $45 million.

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After three months of TV they got a massive deal and a three-year extension, it’s an incredible achievement for a start-up. And that is after WWE chose to move NXT to the same night when they didnt have to. That move was designed to hurt AEW and I’m not sure it has.

WWE’s move of NXT was designed to stall any momentum and it didn’t work, bottom line.

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NXT moved to a day they’ve been on since its launch?

K

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