AEW Dynamite Sails To Ratings Victory Over NXT
A big win for AEW in the first true head-to-head battle since 18 December.
AEW Dynamite scored a significant victory over WWE NXT as true head-to-head competition returned to the Wednesday Night Wars this week.
Per Showbuzz Daily, an average of 947,000 viewers watched Dynamite across its two hours while NXT scored its second-lowest viewership since the battle began - 721,000. A combined total of 1.668 million people watched live wrestling on Wednesday evening.
AEW's number is down from the previous week's 967,000. NXT, meanwhile, rose from the 548,000 that tuned in for their clip-heavy awards show.
As far as the key 18-49 demographic goes, Dynamite almost doubled NXT's rating at 0.36 vs. 0.19. AEW's figure is identical to the previous week's.
The key takeaway here is that the vast majority of people who tuned into last week's acclaimed episode of Dynamite stuck around for this week's maligned one. The increased effort AEW put into marketing the 8 January episode compared to NXT appears to have paid off as well.
Next week's numbers will be more telling, with Dynamite widely criticised for its Nightmare Collective angle, screwy finishes, and other creative flubs. It's hard to imagine all of those 947,000 people sticking around after that, despite the Bash at the Beach concept's return.