For the past couple of weeks, as I’ve reporting on the ratings for AEW Dynamite and NXT, I’ve been openly hoping to have a different story to tell than “Both shows were down, but AEW came out ahead.”
After AEW topped the ratings on their premiere, it was the same story week after week after week. Last week, opposite the final game of the World Series, the numbers were especially low, and I was hopeful they’d finally have to rise this week.
Sure enough, the numbers are up, but they rose much more sharply for NXT, putting the two shows much closer in terms of viewers than they’ve ever been before.
As reported by Showbuzz Daily, AEW Dynamite drew 822,000 viewers on TNT, and NXT had 813,000 viewers on USA. For those who are as bad at math as I am, that’s a difference of only 9,000. It also means NXT had the most viewers last night that it’s had since its first two hour episode on USA, whereas AEW had more viewers just two weeks ago than it did last night.
In the Cable Top 150, Dynamite ranked eighth while NXT came in twelfth. For overall viewership they were even more neck-in-neck with AEW at #31 and NXT at #32.
AEW Dynamite received a 0.35 rating in the 18-49 demo, while NXT got a 0.30 rating. Last week, for comparison, AEW had a 0.33 in the demo compared to NXT’s 0.18. So even though AEW is still in top, NXT/WWE are definitely the ones celebrating these numbers.
Of course, this was the week that NXT Superstars had invaded both Raw and Smackdown, drawing eyes from those more highly rated shows want to NXT with the expectation of fallout. Time will tell if those viewers stick around, although we’ll likely see more of this back-and-forth at least until Survivor Series.
