This week’s episode of AEW Dynamite drew 502,000 viewers with a 0.16 rating in the 18-49 demo, which is down from last week’s 681,000 viewers with a 0.23 rating.
This was the lowest viewership for a non-preempted episode of Dynamite.
There was no major sports event that night, but the show did compete with the College World Series on ESPN and the Olympic Trials on NBC, which led the cable and network ratings, respectively. Additionally, Dynamite faced competition from a Kendrick Lamar concert streaming on Amazon Prime during the Juneteenth holiday.
Compared to the same week in 2023, Dynamite saw a 44.4% decrease in total viewers and a 51.5% drop in the 18-49 demographic, marking the largest year-over-year declines the show has ever experienced. This also represents the 31st consecutive week that Dynamite has seen a year-over-year decline in total viewers.
Sean Ross Sapp reported the following about Dynamite’s low viewership:
“This number isn’t an error. One of the reasons highlighted from both sides was the lead in changing from Big Bang Theory to Black Panther, which was said to be a significantly lower number as well.”
Fightful Select later added:
“Fightful Select spoke with AEW sources about their feelings on the number, and how they rationalized it. We were told that the typical lead in for AEW, Big Bang Theory, usually does a demo number of 200-250k for their final quarter hour.
This week’s lead in was Black Panther, which they said landed at under 85k in the demo for the final quarter hour, a significant drop-off. They believe that the missing people were the lead in watchers that didn’t exist this week.
AEW were told that the ‘tune in’ number ended up actually being strong because of the lead-in drop off.
AEW talent that we spoke to were surprised by the number.
When Fightful reached out to a WBD rep about the number, and said ‘Just a very odd week in general, and a confluence of stuff Juneteenth holiday in the middle of the week (when does a mid-week holiday ever happen in late spring/summer months?!). Competition with Olympic trials and college baseball all World Series in prime time.
Amazing weather in much of the country (especially up here in the northeast), so lots more people out and about. Wouldn’t really put much into one week’s number, although I know the wrestling community likes to go nuclear with these kinds of one-offs,’ indicating they expect the number to increase next week.
Another WBD source says this number does not affect the potential of a new AEW-WBD deal.”
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