Can NXT Save the WWE?

To be clear, it is not like the WWE is going away any time soon. They are a publicly traded company and worth more than 5 billion dollars. BUT, their ratings, popularity, and reviews have all been on a steady decline in recent years. So what can stop the downward spiral? Especially with the new promotion AEW more than happy to give wrestling fans what they have been missing? The WWE hopes the answer is NXT.

It all started with WWE's Crown Jewel pay-per-view on October 31st in Saudi Arabia. Due to reasons which are still up for debate, most of the WWE personel involved with the show (which included a large of number of on-air talent) were not able to leave the country in a timely manner. This presented a major problem, because a lot of those staff members were scheduled to be part of the live Smackdown broadcast the next day (November 1st).

It is unknown whether what happened next was planned all along or it was an impromptu decision due to the circumstances. Either way, Smackdown ended up featuring a lot of stars from WWE's NXT program as part of an invasion angle. And ironically, this new storyline was very well received by WWE fans. Instead of the currently ongoing stale (and sometimes awful) storylines such as Lana leaving Rusev, fans were treated to an angle which hasn't occurred since WCW "invaded" WWE.

This whole angle was actually very clever on WWE's part. On the one hand, it gave Raw and Smackdown the adrenaline shot the two shows needed to break out of their slumps in terms of storylines. On the other hand, it exposed the WWE audience who may not be familiar with NXT on what that show had to offer. Remember, NXT only moved from WWE's online network to the USA network approximately two months ago. So many viewers of Raw and Smackdown have never actually watched NXT before.

Thanks to the invasion, NXT has morphed from what was supposed to be WWE's "minor league" into a viable brand of its own. This is especially important right now due to the emergence of AEW. Not only is the upstart promotion garnering a lot of praise from fans and critics alike, but AEW's Dynamite program (which shares the same timeslot as NXT) has been consistently beating NXT in the ratings.

Speaking of ratings, how has this NXT invasion affected WWE's ratings? Looking at the chart above, one can see that the number of viewers for both Raw and Smackdown have increased since the invasion storyline was introduced on November 1st. However, the biggest increase occurred for NXT. From the October 30th edition to the November 6th edition, the show gained a whopping 40.1% in viewers. With this latest boost, NXT's viewership is only a mere 1.1% smaller than that of Dynamite's.

Will these increases in WWE's ratings continue? Or has the shine on the NXT invasion angle started to lose luster already? We'll fine out in a few days once the ratings for the November 13th episode of NXT come out.