AEW Viewers Higher Than Ever Since Max Debut
Since AEW debuted on Max there have been more questions than answers when it comes to ratings but is there good news for Tony Khan?
On October 2nd, 2024 it was announced that All Elite Wrestling had reached a new media rights agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery. The deal was said to be for three years with the addition of a fourth option year that can be exercised by WBD.
A further report noted that AEW stands to net a stunning $555 million over the course of those three years.
The deal represented a huge landmark for AEW and came after it was announced that WWE would be taking Raw to Netflix. Given the size of the respective deals, ratings are being analysed and discussed online by fans never before. And that narrative has not played well for Tony Khan’s company as ratings for Dynamite have dipped to an average of just over 618,000 viewers per week on TBS since 2025 began.
But things might be looking rosier now thanks to the show also being simulcast on the Max streaming service as numbers for that platform have now come to light.
How Many People Are Really Watching AEW?
Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that despite a report suggesting half a million viewers are watching AEW Dynamite on Max, it’s anything but that simple:
(BJ Bethel of SEScoops) said Dynamite has been doing half a million viewers on Max on average every week. The thing is that viewers on a streaming service and Nielsen numbers are completely different. An average episode of Dynamite does legitimately by the third day just on TV, not on streaming, does about 1.5 million viewers but the Nielsen number would be 600k/650k live, maybe 800k with the DVR numbers.
[…] Basically, 1.5 million for Dynamite and 1 million for Collision is the number of viewers for a typical show who will watch a portion of the show on television within a couple of days.
The problem with the streaming number is, first, nobody knows. These numbers are under lock and key. AEW doesn’t know them, they have an idea but they don’t know them. BJ did have some sources that gave him that number as a roundabout number and it’s probably not the average viewership which would be similar to the Nielsen number but the number of people who logged in at some point.
For Dynamite it would be a number that would go through midnight on Thursday night, it’s possible that’s an accurate number, but it doesn’t mean 650k television viewers and another 500k streaming, it’s more like probably a million and a half television viewers and another half a million streaming making 2 million.
The good news for AEW, either way, is that WBD does not care about all the ratings talk and is said to be very happy with how the company is holding up.
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