Wednesday Night Wars 05/13/2020 Ratings

While both AEW and WWE put on decent episodes of Dynamite and NXT this week, they certainly weren't on the same level of last week's shows which featured multiple championship matches and big returns. As such, both shows ratings expectedly fell this week. Unfortunately for Dynamite, the show's ratings hit an all-time low. But ironically, those numbers were still good enough to chalk up yet another Wednesday Night victory for AEW this week. (See graph above.) Here are the details.

• Dynamite's audience went down from 732,000 last week to 654,000 this week. That's a drop of 10.7%. In the 18-49 demographics department, the show's ratings fell from 0.28 last week to 0.23 this week.

• NXT's audience fell from 663,000 last week to 604,000 this week. That's a drop of 8.9%. The show's 18-49 demographics rating also fell, going from 0.18 last week to 0.15 this week.

The featured match on Dynamite this week was a tag team bout between Kenny Omega/Matt Hardy and Santana/Ortiz. Other highlights included a match with Chris Jericho, a segment with Jon Moxley and Brodie Lee, and a confrontation between Cody Rhodes and Lance Archer. This episode nicely advanced current storylines, but the Omega/Hardy versus Santana/Ortix match fell a little short. Perhaps last week's "street fight" match had set the bar too high. There was a match which stood out, however. Suprisingly, it was from the women's devision as Hikaru Shida, Kris Statlander, Britt Baker, and Penelope Ford faced off in a fatal 4-way match. AEW's women's division has been the promotion's Achillie's heel for the longest time now, but you wouldn't know it judging by this match. The ending of the match was a little odd, but we still saw strong performances by all four competitors.

Over on NXT, the tag team championship was on the line with Matt Riddle and Timothy Thatcher facing off against Imperium. In addition, the show featured a match with Finn Balor, an appearance by Rhea Ripley, and a major announcement from D-Generation X. All of these matches and segments weren't bad, but they weren't particularly noteworthy either. The actual wrestling was a little below the usual NXT standard, and the D-Generation X announcement was little more than a marketing ploy. So all in all, it isn't surprising why WWE wasn't able to retain the additional viewers it had garnered last week.

A little surprisingly, while Dynamite's and NXT's ratings fell, both Raw and Smackdown made huge rebounds this week. As many people know, the ratings for both shows have been nosediving in recent weeks. But perhaps thanks to WWE's Money in the Bank pay-per-view this past weekend, a big chunk of the audience returned to catch this week's episodes of the two shows.

• Raw's viewership went up from last week's 1,686,000 to 1,918,667 this week. That's a big bump of 13.8%. With regard to the 18-49 demographics rating, Raw also saw a big increase as the number went up from last week's 0.46 to this week's 0.57.

• Smackdown's viewership didn't increase as much as Raw's, but it was still a very healthy comeback. It went up 7.4%, rising from from 1,885,000 viewers last week to 2,025,000 viewers this week. The show's 18-49 demographic rating, however, remained the same at 0.5.

As previously mentioned, Dynamite saw its lowest rating this week. So most likely, AEW will attempt to include something in next week's episode to entice fans to tune in. However, as of this writing, no major matches have been officially announced yet. Plus, given this current pandemic, there may not be much that AEW can do to overcome the negative impact of empty arena shows. As for NXT, while the brand has seen worse ratings in the past, it definitely has nothing to brag about. (It did just lose again in the rattings after all.) So it is pretty much in the same boat. We'll have to wait to see if the two promotions can once again flex their creative muscles to come up with something interesting for next week. For now, Dynamite's win-loss record for the Wednesday Night Wars 26-5-1 for viewership and 31-1 for the 18-49 demographic. For NXT, the record is 5-26-1 for viewership and 1-31 for the 18-49 demographic. This week, Dynamite had 8.3% more viewers than NXT, and this extends their winning streak to four weeks in a row.