AEW Dynamite Defeating WWE TV In Important Areas

They stand alone. AEW has shaken wrestling up in a big way and that is a good thing. WWE has dominated the wrestling world for over twenty years now and while they are still the undisputed top dog in the industry, AEW has gotten a nice foothold with an audience that wants to watch their product. It turns out that the audience is a bit bigger than you might have guessed.

While AEW has not been around for very long, they have certainly made an impact during their history. The weekly Dynamite show started hot and has maintained a good chuck of their audience while regular fending off NXT most weeks. That is quite the impressive feat, but how are they doing compared to the top level? It turns out that AEW is doing a good thing that almost no one else is doing.

According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, AEW’s television audience has grown slightly over the course of the last year while WWE programming has declined over the same time period. The period ranges from November 2019 – November 2020, with various special shows, such as SmackDown’s debut on FOX and the Brodie Lee tribute show being left off to avoid “artificial highs”. Overall AEW is beating all three of WWE’s television shows in the areas of audience growth as well as key demographics. Here are the audience numbers for 2020 and how they compare to 2019.

Monday Night Raw – 1.722 million viewers (down 19.2%)
SmackDown – 2.207 million viewers (down 7.7%)
NXT – 686,000 viewers (down 17.2%)
Dynamite – 885,000 (up 10.5%)

AEW has also increased in both the 18-34 and 18-49 demographics while all three WWE shows have decreased, meaning that AEW’s audience is growing and they are getting younger, while WWE’s audiences are shrinking and getting smaller.

Opinion: There is a lot to unpack here but the interesting note is that AEW is indeed holding as well as increasing its audience. That is impressive enough, especially when you factor in how badly WWE is doing at the same time. Now of course these numbers could change in a hurry and it is far too early to suggest that WWE is in serious danger, but for the moment at least, AEW is here and does not seem to be going away.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. Thank you for reading!