The Kenny Omega-El Hijo del Vikingo main event on this week’s “Dynamite” had the rare feat of peaking with the 18-49 demo audience.
The final two segments of the show, highlighted by the main event match that has drawn raves from across the wrestling industry, drew 461,000 and 455,000 viewers, bringing up the average for the two-hour show to 434,000 18-49 viewers, according to Wrestlenomics.
The overall numbers for the show had “Dynamite” averaging 955,000 viewers for the night, peaking, as usual, in the 8-8:15 p.m. ET quarter hour, at 1.016 million viewers.
The show format this week didn’t do the ratings any favors. The opening quarter-hour gave us a trios match featuring Orange Cassidy, Darby Allin and Sting matched up with The Butcher, The Blade and Kip Sabian, a trios match that bled into the second quarter-hour, which averaged 894,000 viewers, a massive 12 percent drop-off.
That would be the only QH under 900,000 for the night, though.
This week’s main event resonated with fans a lot better than the March 15 three-way trios main event, which averaged 779,000 viewers overall and 323,000 in the 18-49 demo for the 9:45-10 p.m. QH.
Last week’s “Dynamite” averaged 852,000 viewers overall and 353,000 in the 18-49 demo.
The March 8 “Dynamite,” the first post-“Revolution” show, averaged 858,000 overall viewers and 380,000 in the 18-49 demo.
Looks like even just the buzz over Omega-del Vikingo got more people to tune in.
For comparison: This week’s ‘Raw’
This week’s WWE “Raw” averaged 1.705 million overall viewers and 697,000 in the 18-49 demo, with the show’s peak coming in the 9-9:15 p.m. ET QH, which was built around a Cody Rhodes live promo that drew 1.904 million viewers overall and 820,000 in the 18-49 demo.
The main event of the three-hour show, a Kevin Owens-Solo Sikoa match, drew a low-water mark of 1.457 million viewers overall, and 629,000 18-49 viewers.
Quick math
“Dynamite” had 56.0 percent of the average overall audience of “Raw,” and 62.3 percent of the 18-49 demo audience.
Another good return on investment for Warner Bros. Discovery, which is paying AEW $43.8 million per year for “Dynamite” and “Rampage.” NBCUniversal, the parent company of USA, is paying $240 million a year for “Raw.”
The AEW TV deal runs through 2024, at which point it would seem clear that the company will be able to ask for and receive a significant increase in TV rights fees.
The impact of ‘Big Bang Theory’
To answer a question about how much impact there is from the lead-in show, “Big Bang Theory,” that show has averaged 938,000 viewers in the 7:30-8 p.m. ET time slot over the past month, according to data from SpoilerTV.com.
So, no, the big numbers for the first quarter-hour of “Dynamite” aren’t a function of people hanging around from “Big Bang Theory.”
More news and notes
- Kenny Omega, as a single, has now had two of the early top candidates for Match of the Year – his Wrestle Kingdom match with Will Ospreay in January, and this week’s match with El Hijo del Vikingo. Maybe ol’ TK can use Omega as a single a little more often?
- It seems that things are being moved, slowly, in the direction of having an eventually returning CM Punk align as a heel with the newly heel Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, Wheeler Yuta) to face off with The Elite that is soon to add back “Hangman” Adam Page to the core of Omega and The Young Bucks. The recent social media activity of Punk going on blast again against anybody and everybody should be viewed as playing into the “reality sells” aspect of things.
- AEW world champ MJF, having dispatched Bryan Danielson, for now, is being geared up to face one from among the other three “Pillars” of AEW – Darby Allin, Sammy Guevara and “Jungle Boy” Jack Perry – at “Double or Nothing” in May. With the focus of the main feud about to shift from the world title to the Punk-Elite feud, it makes sense to dial back a bit with MJF, and using the world title picture to elevate the company’s other young stars.
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Chris Graham
