NXT finally beat AEW Dynamite for total viewers, and all they had to do was bring in Becky Lynch. AEW has been winning this race since Week One, although both shows’ numbers have sank more than they’ve risen. NXT came close to closing the gap two weeks ago, but it widened again last week. This Wednesday night, November 20, NXT won the night in total viewers for the first time, although AEW Dynamite held onto the key 18-49 demographic.
As reported by the Wrestling Observer, NXT had 916,000 viewers, the most they’ve ever gotten since going up against AEW. That’s also an increase of 22 percent from last week, which probably has a lot to do with the pre-Survivor Series promise of big main roster stars showing up on NXT (made explicit this week by Triple H on Raw). They also got a 0.30 rating in the 18-49 demo. That’s a 20 percent increase from last week, and it’s tied with their November 6th episode for the second-best demo rating that NXT has gotten since the direct competition began.
As for AEW Dynamite, which featured neither Becky Lynch nor Seth Rollins, they only got 893,000 viewers. That’s down 7 percent from last week’s Full Gear PPV fallout show, and their 0.39 rating in the 18-49 demo is down 9 percent from last week (but still higher than NXT’s this week). Dynamite ranked eighth in the demo on cable, while NXT was 13th.
AEW had higher ratings in every demographic except people over 50, where NXT got a 0.40 to AEW’s 0.29. It will be interesting to see how many of those older WWE viewers will stick around after Survivor Series.
