Ratings Report: AEW pulls in big number for July 17 ‘Dynamite’

AEW “Dynamite” drew an average of 795,000 viewers for its July 17 episode, which featured a 60-minute International title match between Will Ospreay and MJF and a world-title match between Swerve Strickland and Kazuchika Okada.

The viewer number, courtesy Wrestlenomics, is a 15.1 percent increase from last week, and notably, the highest viewership since the April 10 “Dynamite” that was built around the disastrous decision to air the security footage from “All In” involving CM Punk and Jack Perry.

From a look at the quarter-hour numbers, the move to have the Ospreay-MJF match go the length of the first hour, from 8-9 p.m. ET, was a good one – that hour averaged 842,000 viewers.

The overrun from the match, which did bleed a bit into the 9-9:15 p.m. ET quarter-hour, helped that QH average 841,000 viewers.

Of note here: the first QH, coming in from the “Big Bang Theory” rerun, averaged 871,000 viewers, which I point out because the AEW detractors like to say that the “BBT” lead-in is a key to the overall rating for “Dynamite.”

This week, at least, the first hour, and really the whole show, kept people tuned in pretty much throughout.

It’s usually the case in wrestling TV that a show that pops a good rating is the result of good booking from previous shows, and AEW has had a nice run of good content of late, so I’ll assume that’s the case here.