Will Ospreay Reacts To AEW’s Recent Ratings Woes
Will Ospreay had a strong reaction to AEW’s recent drop in television ratings that saw the company reach a new low.
At the AEW-NJPW Forbidden Door PPV on June 30th in Long Island, NY, the AEW International Champion Will Ospreay will challenge Swerve Strickland for the AEW World Championship in the main event of the show.
Since officially joining the AEW roster as a full-timer in early 2024, Ospreay has been on a roll as a singles wrestler since he has yet to lose a match.
While Ospreay has already ascended to main event status after about four months, business-wise AEW is struggling in some ways. Attendance has been down compared to prior years while the television audience is getting smaller.
The June 19th episode of AEW Dynamite was praised by many people as one of the best episodes of the year, yet the television ratings were bad. It drew the smallest audience ever in the five-year history of Dynamite (on a non-holiday) with 502,000 viewers in the US watching on TBS. As for the coveted 18-49 age demographic, it drew a 0.16 rating which was down 30.4% from the previous week.
In an interview with CBS Sports, Will Ospreay spoke about the low rating while also talking about the quality of the show.
“That one did suck to see when it came out because, for me, that was a home run Dynamite. It was an excellent show. There weren’t any down points in it for me.”
Will Ospreay Uses Low AEW Ratings As Motivation
As the discussion continued, Ospreay spoke about how he thinks the low numbers will motivate others in AEW just like it does for himself.
“It sucks that it was such a low rating but it’s just motivating me and I’m sure it’s motivating others to try and think out of the box and come back swinging.”
“I’m not someone who ignores that type of s–t. I see it and I take note of it. I put it in the checkbook and I make sure whatever we do next week, we come back swinging. We shouldn’t ignore criticism or shy away from it. We’re still a five-year company and we’re still hitting the ropes with these things. For me, AEW still has lots of growing pains to go through.”
The viewership numbers for AEW Dynamite went up for the June 26th edition of the show, but June 2024 was down 23% compared to June 2023, which is likely going to motivate Ospreay and others in the company even more.