The debut of All Elite Wrestling’s “Dynamite” drew 1.4 million viewers and was second in overall cable ratings for Wednesday night according to Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily. NXT on the USA Network drew 890,000 viewers in its first head-to-head with the upstart rival.
The series premier of All Elite Wrestling drew a 0.68 rating in the A18-49 demo compared to 0.32 from NXT. “Dynamite” will be a two hour show on TNT on Wednesday. Similarly, NXT will be two hours. For the first two weeks on the USA Network, NXT had been an hour long telecast but moved to two hours with the new competition.
Notably, Tuesday night TNT aired a “Countdown” show for AEW which drew 691,000 viewers which is impressive considering it did not contain live wrestling content but just a glorified highlight show of what to expect from the company.
The WWE’s product saw a 10% decline over the last two weeks with the preceding weeks scoring over 1 million viewers.
Payout Perspective:
Regardless of which show you may prefer, this is a big win for the genre of pro wrestling as over 2 million viewers tuned in on Wednesday to watch either WWE or AEW. Only the MLB Wildcard game on ESPN drew more on cable Wednesday despite the fact that it was also opening night for the NHL. We shall see if AEW can sustain the ratings.
Leave a Reply