PWInsider - WWE News, Wrestling News, WWE

AS THE WEDNESDAY NIGHT WARS COME TO AN END, YEAR TO YEAR BOTH SHOWS HAVE SOME BAD TRENDS THAT THEY NEED TO REVERSE

With the AEW vs. NXT Wednesday Night War coming to an end next week, I thought with the first quarter ending yesterday it would be a great time to look at where the shows are this year vs. last, 2020 vs. 2021.

Now, before I get into that it should be noted that this was really never a war.  AEW's goal was to take on WWE.  That means Raw and Smackdown, not the company's third brand.  With that said, they did consistently beat NXT and this an amazing job for a start up company with just a vocal following of hardcore fans.  The 1,409,000 viewers that they did for the first show was an amazing feat and the company should be commended for getting that kind of number.

Of course, since then the product has cooled off, so figured we could see where we are now by comparing the numbers from January, February and March from each year and see what kind of losses both products have suffered. Let’s go to the chart below and look at the average numbers for the periods.

NXT Month	2020 viewers	2021 viewers	2020 18-49	2021 18-49
January	690,000	642,750	0.202	0.163
February	759,500	653,750	0.235	0.153
March	662,400	656,500	0.200	0.172
Quarter	705,250	653,692	0.212	0.163

Now let's go to AEW.

AEW Month	2020 viewers	2021 viewers	2020 18-49	2021 18-49
January	910,600	753,000	0.325	0.298
February	875,750	790,750	0.318	0.318
March	855,750	780,400	0.358	0.285
Quarter	883,000	775,154	0.335	0.298

OK, so what can we glean from this?  Well, both shows are down. 

For the quarter, NXT has lost 7.3% of their viewership from last year and 23% in the demo.

For the quarter, AEW has lost 12.2% of their viewership from last year and 11% in the demo.

AEW has lost a larger percentage of viewership while NXT has lost a larger percentage of the demo during the period.

For the latest period, March vs. March, we get a different story.

March to March, NXT has lost 0.89% in viewership and 14% in the demo.

March to March, AEW has lost 8.8% in viewership and 20.4% in the demo.

For those interested, I will give my take what this all means on Saturday's FMB with Mike Epsenhart.

 

 

 

If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!

• Tweet