Wednesday Night Wars 02/26/2020 Ratings

Both shows' ratings fell this week, but it didn't follow the traditional pattern. (See graph above.) In the past, NXT's ratings have held relatively steady while Dynamite's fluctuated by almost 10 percent at a time. This week, though, the opposite was true. So as you might expect, AEW came out ahead again this week for its 9th week in a row.

Dynamite's audience fell from 893,000 last week to 865,000 this week. That's a drop of 3.1 percent. In the 18-49 demographic ratings, the show fell from 0.31 to 0.30. This episode didn't feature any championship matches. However, it did start off with a critically acclaimed 30 minute iron man match between Kenny Omega and PAC. Also, this was the go home show before AEW's Revolution pay-per-view this weekend. So those factors may have attributed to Dynamite not experiencing as big a drop in the ratings as NXT did.

The audience drop for NXT was significantly higher at 9.7 percent. It fell from last week's 794,000 to 717,000 this week. Such a large drop is unusual for NXT, especially when you consider that this episode featured a main event between Raw's Charlotte Flair and the ever popular Bianca Belair. As for the 18-49 demographics, NXT's rating this week was 0.23. The WWE show set a 2020 record last week with a 0.25 rating among the coveted demographic, but it is obviously unable to keep the attention of the younger crowd on a consistant basis.

So although both shows' ratings fell this week, Dynamite ended the week in a much better position than NXT. And given that the next episode of Dynamite will most likely contain fall-out from the Revolution pay-per-view this weekened, AEW will most likely get yet another victory in the Wednesday Night Wars next week. WWE is already trying to counteract this by announcing two cage matches for next week's NXT. However, with AEW's winning streak so far, things are not looking very hopeful for the black and gold brand. With this week's victory in the ratings, Dynamite's win-loss record is now at 17-3-1 for viewership and 20-1 for the 18-49 demographics. Inversely, NXT's record stands at 3-17-1 for viewership and 1-20 for the 18-49 demographics.