You’d think the lack of other sports might lead people to wrestling in this strange time of the pandemic, but I suppose the problem with that is that wrestling’s just not quite the same without a live crowd, and a lot of viewers just aren’t into the Empty Arena Experience. So viewership numbers have been down across the board in recent weeks, not just for the Wednesday Night shows, but for Monday Night Raw as well.
Last week did see AEW Dynamite gain a bit, reaching 731,000 viewers compared to NXT’s 665,000, following two weeks in a row where NXT had more viewers than Dynamite. Last night AEW was in the lead once again, although everybody’s total numbers were down.
According to Showbuzz Daily, last night’s AEW Dynamite had 693,000 viewers, compared to NXT‘s 637,000 viewers. The only number for either show that went up instead of down was Dynamite’s rating in the 18-49 demographic, which went up to 0.27 after sitting at 0.25 for the previous couple of weeks. NXT lost a bit in that same demo, going down to 0.16, compared to last week’s 0.18.
AEW came in 16th in the Cable Top 150, which is 8 places higher than last week. Meanwhile NXT dropped one spot from 50th to 51st in those rankings this week, taking it out of the Top 50.
The rumor since WrestleMania has been that Charlotte Flair was given the NXT Women’s Championship in the hope that she could bring more viewers to WWE’s Wednesday night show. Considering last night was her first match on NXT since becoming Champion, it’s safe to say that if that was indeed the plan, it’s not panning out.
Next week, AEW will be live for the first time in weeks, while NXT will be pre-taped. It will be interesting to see if that affects viewership, but since both shows will still lack live audiences, things will probably stay pretty close to where they’ve been.