Photo courtesy: AEW
This week’s head-to-head battle between All Elite Wrestling and NXT saw AEW present their first taped edition of the show while NXT was live from Full Sail University.
The experiment of taping Dynamite on the Chris Jericho Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Rager at Sea the day before still led to an AEW victory in both viewership and in the key demo.
While the results of the show were readily available, it was offset by the fact that AEW had three of its major stars wrestling with Chris Jericho, Kenny Omega, and Jon Moxley all competing on the show. It led the way for AEW to average 871,000 viewers and a 0.35 in the 18-49 demo.
The numbers did decline for AEW with viewership down 7% and the demo decreasing by 8%.
By contrast, NXT was up 10% with an average of 769,000 viewers and a 0.24 among adults 18-49, which was ahead 14% of last week’s mark. This included a ten-minute overrun with the show ending at 10:10 pm Eastern on the USA Network.
The strongest competition came from the news coverage of the ongoing impeachment hearing. There was a Toronto Raptors vs. Philadelphia 76ers game that did 1,152,000 viewers on ESPN. The bigger game between San Antonio and New Orleans didn’t begin until 9:37 pm Eastern so the competition from that game was minimal.
If you are looking for patterns for the AEW show, it was clear that the taped nature didn’t affect older viewers. Adults over 50 were the same as last week while adults 25-54 were only down 2%. The big decreases were among females 12-34 which fell 33%, males 12-34 down 23% and adults 18-34 declining 17% this week.
NXT was helped by large increases among adults 18-34 by 29%, males 18-49 by 23%, and females 12-34 increasing 22%.
AEW won all the key demos except adults over 50 with NXT edging them out 0.38 to 0.34. The other competitive category was females 12-34 with AEW edging out NXT 0.12 to 0.11.
Below is the breakdown of the demos and comparisons to last week’s figures:
ADULTS 18-49
AEW: 0.35 (-8%)
NXT: 0.24 (+14%)
FEMALES 18-49
AEW: 0.22 (-15%)
NXT: 0.16 (Even)
MALES 18-49
AEW: 0.48 (-6%)
NXT: 0.32 (+23%)
PEOPLE 18-34
AEW: 0.20 (-17%)
NXT: 0.18 (+29%)
FEMALES 12-34
AEW: 0.12 (-33%)
NXT: 0.11 (+22%)
MALES 12-34
AEW: 0.20 (-23%)
NXT: 0.16 (+23%)
ADULTS 25-54
AEW: 0.41 (-2%)
NXT: 0.27 (+12.5%)
ADULTS 50+
AEW: 0.34 (Even)
NXT: 0.38 (+9%)
