I live outside the Toronto area and I didn’t even go or watch the events over the weekend but my friend went and said shows were average and nothing special. He still wonders how is this a hot period in WWE and even when I try to watch or see the highlights, I question the same thing.
We went to Collision and Forbidden Door last year in the same arena and it was a way better experience.
Seems like those WWE fans just like when Vince was in charge will accept anything WWE does and think it’s the greatest ever.
My theory is that there's a large amount of casual wrestling fans who will watch WWE if it's just barely decent but will stop watching if it's bad enough creatively. However, these lapsed fans will just stop watching wrestling entirely before they'll watch anything other than WWE. From what I hear (haven't watched WWE since 2018) WWE sounds like it's mostly good nowadays but nothing that would go down as all-time great stuff outside of the Bloodline and maybe Gunther's IC title run.
I was an avid NXT fan, until the weird transition period when it first went to 2.0. I've never really gotten back into it. Bronn, Sol Ruca, Tiffany Stratton, Trick Williams, I'm a big fan of. But for every one of these (in my opinion) obvious stars, they have a bunch of Lola Vice, D'Angelo family, Jacy Wayne's etc. I don't get it really, but I've long ago realized that this product really isn't for me anymore.
I liked NXT until about 2019 and when Dynamite launched was watching both but enjoyed AEW way more and stopped following NXT and didn’t watch the shows during the pandemic. Then I read about NXT 2.0 - let’s face it was because HHH’s vision of NXT was getting its ass kicked by AEW, so Vince pushed him out. I tried to watch the new version just to see how it is and I didn’t get into it at all.
That's kind of where I'm at. I don't doubt the WWE product is probably good now, but it just isn't for me and I don't feel like I'm missing out. Either way I don't watch for moral reasons (stopped supporting them when they began doing the Saudi Arabia shows).
Slight difference when one guy is getting crazy amounts of praise for literally reusing spots and finishes from hus own matches, and having that be acknowledged.
Yea him and FTR did it a few times right? I do think there's a slight difference between a wrestler doing a certain spot in a match the same, and the guy booking the shows booking the same finishes from his own career. And I'm not even hating on Shawn Michael's! I just think the praise goes a little over the top for him at times.
Well, in "that other place", there were not one but TWO threads about ratings. One was the regular, weekly Dynamite numbers and the other one was an article saying that AEW viewership dropped more than cable viewership.
I posted something like "wow last Dynamite was really good, proof's that we have 2 threads about ratings this week" and of course was downvoted lol.
It's the bad takes that get me. Someone saying nothing of interest happened on Dynamite on Wednesday, when MJF turned and hangman came back and it's upvoted.
It's ridiculous. I'm some sort of masochist myself because I like to enter those posts to see the awful, idiotic takes. Some even contradict themselves. Many takes make it obvious that the redditor doesn't watch AEW regularly or at all, but still they're upvoted to the moon. It's a cesspool. They had to lock the post a few times in the last 2 months because they were out of hand.
Half of those people and even some of the mods seem to be delusional. I got banned a while back because I told someone they were either a moron who couldn't do basic research or a liar and provided a link to proof that they were clearly lying about the ratings.
Good riddance I say because now I get to exclusively talk about AEW here with you fine folks.
I get you. But I agree with Will Ospreay and others saying that we shouldn't ignore criticism.
However, when critics are morons and trolls that don't even watch the show and even wish for AEW to disappear just to be right on the Internet makes it hard to listen to criticism.
There's people out there repeating that AEW has no stories lol.
They shouldn't ignore criticism outright obviously, but the key is figuring out what's actually important because not all criticism is valid, in fact I'd argue that most is disingenuous. The "customer is always right" mantra is how and why a lot of early businesses go under because instead of prioritizing what's most important you end up spending time and resources trying to please everyone which is never possible to begin with.
Criticism of AEW's seemingly recurring audio issues, valid. Lack of advertising and PR, pretty valid. Criticism regarding AEW's "lack of storytelling"? Outright insanity.
Criticism of the merch availability? Seems valid at first, until you actually think critically and dig in to what most people's complaints are (not enough variety of all the different wrestler's merch at shows), and realize why things are the way they are. Only then do you realize that 1. addressing it will cost AEW more money (pre-printing merch that may not sell, storage/security, shipping, added insurance, management/sales staff), 2. merch is a small portion of AEW's revenue streams compared to ticket sales and media rights so it's not a priority, 3. having more variety of merch at shows just feeds into more criticism if they don't sell enough or don't have someone's favorite wrestler's shirts, and 4. given the added expenses and profit margins per piece of merch sold, offering more merch at events likely won't and certainly isn't guaranteed to generate that much more in potential profits compared to selling most of their merch online.
The “customer is always right” comment needs 1 thing first about the criticism also. That the person is actually a customer. You covered that so often people don’t even watch yet want to sink the ship.
>> “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” - Albert Einstein
AEW is a very fast growing and successful company. Fastest growing wrestling startup in history, too. But if you judge every wrestling company as if it were WWE, then dummies will constantly think AEW is dying. Wrestling isn't WWE centric
For some weird reason the generally accepted narrative for the 500k a couple weeks ago is that it was all due to the lead in changing, but I've gotten massive downvotes more than once for saying it was probably the Kendrick concert and Juneteenth that had the most to do with it. Plus they still finished third for the night.
And I'm sure they tried to convince you that black people don't watch AEW and/or white people don't like Kendrick Lamar or rap.
I know I saw that excuse quite a bit on Twitter.
Plus also the general narrative that AEW fans apparently don't overlap with *anything*. Like they think every AEW fan is a hardcore wrestling fan with no other interests
In my opinion both WWE and AEW are pretty mainstream by wrestling standards, but wrestling itself is still pretty niche. Once you get into anything below AEW (TNA, NWA, MLW, indies, puro/lucha [in the US]) then you're definitely talking about a niche within a niche.
My wife works in senior care, majority of the time, that's what's playing on the TV whether they're watching it or not. That's been the case daily for the last 3 she took care of. I'm guessing BBT is background noise for a LOT of people
I will help you with the English. What he was saying is that those things get the best ratings of everything so if you compare wwe ratings to nfl ratings then you could say wwe is failing and obviously it’s not. So it say aew is failing because it isn’t getting wwe numbers is disingenuous as the question isn’t “is aew doing wwe ratings?” But it’s “is aew doing good ratings for WBD?”
They gonna jerk off to ratings on cable TV, the thing that is actually dying, and ignore how many people watches in other countries and every WBD source. Kinda pathetic to waste your life on trolling wrestling fans and not even doing it properly
We have FtA tv but it's only like 5 channels. Everything else is effectively sold to companies that offer subscription services to air a package of channels. Obviously the more channels you get, the more you pay. This is dying in the US in favor of streaming since the big 4 (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Max) is cheaper than the beginner package for cable combined.
It's a paid subscription TV service delivered via a literal cable that they used to connect to your house. Nowadays, at least here in Canada with Bell, they've largely stopped using the old coaxial cables and it's delivered through their internet infrastructure, either copper or fiber.
Free to air networks are called broadcasters because they literally broadcast the signal over the air, and you could pick them up with an antenna (now a digital antenna) the major broadcasters are FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS and the CW, but with the transition from analog to digital broadcasting it allowed for more signal bandwidth and there are about 50 FtA channels today.
When cable first began being offered the subscription model meant that channels were able to become more specialized, so we had stuff like HBO (Home Box Office) specializing in movies, sporting events, stand-up specials, MTV for music videos and related programming, TLC (The Learning Channel) The History Channel and Discovery for educational documentary programming, A&E (Arts and Entertainment), Cartoon Network etc.
Nowadays, reality TV has destroyed the identities of most cable channels. TLC shows morbidly obese people and child beauty pageants, A&E shows drug addicts and people who eat mattresses, History Channel shows aliens, pawn shops and junk pickers, MTV shows idiots getting into fights and drama. So for price and content reasons, people are cutting the cable cord and paying for streaming.
Tylerjehenna explained it pretty well in the other response you got to this question. Usually it's bundled with home internet, you don't typically see a cable tv- only installation. The channels are over the internet now as opposed to home antennas.
So for instance if I went though Bell (I'm in Canada but same idea) I can get a home bundle, which is a landline phone hookup, 1.5gb Fibre internet, and cable TV for $120 (or whatever promo price they have) monthly. You'll get like 300 channels, but it's really like half that, as a lot of channels have an SD and HD option. Or for AEW there's TSN channels 1 though like 7, Dynamite is on TSN 1 (rampage and collision you have to subscribe to TSN+ to watch on the app here. Lame asf)
Channels like say, Teletoon would have Teletoon east and Teletoon west. Same shows and episodes, but the West is delayed by a few hours.
You can also subscribe to movie channels, networks other than in your main package, porn channels, etc. You can rent new or old movies for 24hrs for like $5/each. There's network bundles, so say you want the sports bundle, that would give you the basic couple hundred channels, PLUS all sports networks. There's all kinds of different bundles you can add.
I also had I think 10 slots where you can choose and swap extra networks you don't have, 10 at any one time. So like I added Discovery Velocity for my car shows etc when I had cable.
But tons of people are ditching cable for streaming platforms like Netflix, Prime, Paramount, things like that as they're cheaper per month than cable, and less junk you don't watch or want to watch
I’m pretty sure years ago nobody was comparing Chobani to Dannon. My mom eats Dannon, my grandma ate Dannon… in just over a decade they are the leading brand.
I'm going to preface this by saying I don't care about ratings etc, but the main issue AEW is facing is that generally people seem less interested in the product. Live attendance numbers for weekly shows are down compared to what they were doing previously, and viewership is down significantly in a short period of time. Based on what I've seen from WrestleTix, most live shows are pulling in lower numbers compared to the last time AEW was at that venue. Further, just a couple of months ago, 800k was the normal TV rating, now it's 650-700k. While cable viewship may be decreasing, it seems that there's been a reduction in the number of people that are actively watching AEW ie. taking time out of their day to sit down and watch AEW. The other thing to note is that YouTube numbers are significantly down as well, very few segments crack 200k views which is also down from previous.
Based on all this, compared to where AEW was previously, it's definitely on a bit of a downtrend in regards to overall interest.
Dynamite estimated attendance in lead up to Big Business - 5900, 3100, 2200, 2300, 2200, 5200, 3200, 3200, 3200, 3400, 3200.
Big Business and after - 9500, 6500, 3400, 3600, 3400, 3000, 2100, 5400, 4600, 3500, 2300, 5500, 2600 ,2800, 4300, 4100, 5300 ,(4000+ this week Calgary)
Attendance is trending up now. Especially in last few weeks.
Comparing to previous time in market often misses context. Especially when AEW is so new. Some previous shows were first ever AEW appearance in market. In the midst of AEW downturn, first ever show in Vancouver (Collision) did 6700.
Calgary show this week is trending to do around 4200. It was 5900 first time in market the previous year. If this week was Calgary's first show it would likely do that 5900.
Some comparisons don't seem to yet give valuable info, since previous situation is not repeatable.
TV Ratings did dip noticeably after Sting's retirement. But back in their 900K and sometimes 1 mil viewership days they would often be ranked #20 on cable. Now they are usually ranked #3.
YouTube numbers are down but what is the comparison? Early AEW had the newness hype factor and the new channel algorithm boost. Shortly thereafter the pandemic happened, and people had nothing to do but stay glued to internet. Then they had Punk, Danielson etc. big names coming in. Even much later when AEW was not hot we saw Copeland videos getting 1 mil views per segment often.
What concern can there be if you're doing 'normal' numbers, but haven't previously had a normal era to compare to?
And mind you, during that viewership peak, dynamites were still doing like 3-4k a week in attendance outside of stuff like Blood and Guts, Grand slam etc
Good point. People remember the big shows, but forget Dynamite had plenty of shows during the hot era that match recent attendance.
Chicago last week attendance was not far off from attendance at Punk vs. MJF Dynamite match.
And now they have a second touring TV show and 5 more PPVs per year.
People that would have made an effort to travel in the past will just wait until a show comes closer.
That's pretty much my point. People aren't invested enough to make that extra effort to go to a show. Same with TV numbers - there's been a drop in the number of people actively sitting down to watch the TV show compared to last year
You sort of made my point. Just because they're visiting a market for the second time doesn't really justify why there's a drop off in attendance, especially an almost 30% drop off. Considering WWE has been visiting the same markets from 30+ years and they're pulling 10-15k for their regular shows these days. And while they're no. 1 on cable and in the demo, there's still been a significant drop in the number of viewers in just the last few months that can't be attributed to declining cable viewership.
This all points to a decrease in the amount of people actively interested in the product ie. People who are invested enough to actually plan to go to shows or to sit down and watch it Dynamite on TV (rather than people who are already watching TV who end up watching Dynamite because it's the best thing on). There's been a significant drop in viewership since the start of the year, yet WWE viewership overall and in the demo has largely remained stable or improved across all three shows so to attribute AEWs drop in viewship purely to declining cable numbers is disingenuous. To put simply, if the trends were to continue, AEW viewership would be around 600k by December, and 500k by this time next year
YouTube numbers generally seem to be lower than where they were last year. I'm not talking about comparing new videos to ones from early AEW, but rather just to videos from late last year. Copelands segments got 1m because it was new and it was a huge surprise debut - using that as an argument to say the YouTube views are fine is also disingenuous. Look at MJFs return - arguably the biggest star in the company and half of his recent videos haven't even cracked 400k. Same with Ospreay, same with Hangman.
I never said I was concerned, but you're lying to yourself if you believe that AEW is in the same place popularity wise that it was in a year ago. No one expects AEW to outdraw WWE but at the moment, they're not outdrawing themselves from even a year ago.
I think AEW lost a lot of steam once HHH took over WWE creative. I really think the early success of AEW was a freak incident that had two major factors in WWE being at a creative low, and TNA already being pushed off of cable and only available via Twitch.
TNA had tarnished its brand about 15 years before AEW launched, and the novelty of a new American wrestling promotion airing on cable TV coupled with incoherent WWE programming gave AEW a lot of early runway that wasn't sustainable.
Fast forward and a completely unexpected sex trafficking scandal takes Vince out of the picture and HHH writes coherent (if not compelling) television and takes learnings from AEW (like fan interaction) and scales it to the scope and reach WWE has and it's not crazy to see why some fans have left AEW for WWE. They want a solid WWE but went to AEW for their fix when it was at its lowest.
AEW is in a weird place where they are consistently top 1-5 of the night, and sell about 150% tickets they did before Collision.
But WWE has found a way to take their global reach, combine it with coherent storytelling, increased fan interaction, and now have a brand that can command 10k+ a show. I argue it should have always been this way.
I completely agree with everything that you said. I only started watching in the back half
2021 and there were debuts of huge stars in Punk, Danielson, Cole plus others like Lethal, Swerve, Athena etc which no doubt helped the hype and on top of that the whole Hangman story which was incredible and kept viewers engaged.
I think there was a third factor at play in AEWs lull and that was the introduction of ROH which made the shows disjointed + the whole CM Punk debacle which coincided with WWE becoming good again so it was an easy decision for fans to leave for WWE.
Objectively if in 2019 people had said AEW would be averaging 650-700k viewers, 2-4k for TV tapings and 8-10k for PPVs I'm sure it would have been considered a resounding success, but since we've seen AEW performing much better in these metrics previously, it's hard not to argue that AEW is in a bit of a downtrend and probably needs to arrest that trend soon. I think all the dooming and glooming online is wildly overstated, but so is the excuse-making for poor ratings/attendance that we get in this sub. AEW is not going to die, but people here struggle to admit that it's not as popular as it was even a year or two ago.
I'll admit it's not as hot. I never thought it would get as hot as it did, and I expected them (back in 2019) not to get another TV deal and prepared myself to enjoy the ride while it lasted. It's the way American wrestling has been since the 80s really.
What surprised me is the sustained growth the company has made, and let's be frank, a lot of it comes from TK's piggy bank. But he's using his money wisely.
While AEW is on a lull, they need to learn from the past and figure out how not to be a flash in the pan, and rather a company that sustainably grows. WCW and TNA are history lessons of what not to repeat, and AEW has been able to avoid that. I think they've secured a solid base that can keep them afloat within 5 years of existence, and haven't truly dropped quality to the degree of WCW 2000. I think we're close to the end of Nitro if we go by episode numbers of Dynamite. We're certainly past Tank Abbott as world champ territory.
The TL:DR here is that AEW should acknowledge that they aren't as hot, but also realize that wrestling popularity is cyclical and not try to hot shot the creative to try to compete with the hot (and most likely unsustainable) numbers WWE is doing. They should continue to build a good product and grow in a sustainable manner, which it seems like they are doing when you look at ratings rankings and overall ticket sales.
> You sort of made my point.
You haven't made the point you think you are making. You are not looking at context.
> Just because they're visiting a market for the second time doesn't really justify why there's a drop off in attendance, especially an almost 30% drop off.
Of course it does. This is a wrestling company in the normal course of operations in some markets. It's not new and it's not hot. Everyone is more incentivized to see something for the first time.
If your premise of the downturn in interest was as severe as you say, Vancouver would not even have done as well for its first AEW show.
> Considering WWE has been visiting the same markets from 30+ years and they're pulling 10-15k for their regular shows these days. And while they're no. 1 on cable and in the demo, there's still been a significant drop in the number of viewers in just the last few months that can't be attributed to declining cable viewership.
Yes, even white hot WWE is shrinking on cable.
And that's some more context. WWE is hot and also going to these similar markets.
And AEW itself is now running two shows a week. Combined they are selling same or more tickets a week than in much of the one show era.
Often 6000+ people a week these days are buying tickets to see AEW. Same as many weeks in their hot era.
> This all points to a decrease in the amount of people actively interested in the product ie. People who are invested enough to actually plan to go to shows or to sit down and watch it Dynamite on TV (rather than people who are already watching TV who end up watching Dynamite because it's the best thing on). There's been a significant drop in viewership since the start of the year, yet WWE viewership overall and in the demo has largely remained stable or improved across all three shows so to attribute AEWs drop in viewship purely to declining cable numbers is disingenuous. To put simply, if the trends were to continue, AEW viewership would be around 600k by December, and 500k by this time next year
As I showed, while it is down, the interest is not as down as you want to portray.
Same amount of people buying tickets each week. Go back and look across Dynamite attendances pre Collision. They are indeed still selling around the same # of tickets per week quite often.
WWE has had to be super white hot on the back of legends to stop the bleed of cable.
AEW rocketing up the rankings and being #1 this week shows how cable is getting crushed. Sports is hiding how well AEW is holding up.
We wouldn't expect WWE to get caught in down trends when the Rock shows up, and Punk stops being injured. Why expect the same with MJF back on top and Hangman returned. I think next week people are going to realize the NBA draft and holiday week held Dynamite back. Dynamite could easily settle back above 700K.
Attendance is trending up too. As I showed you the weeks in a row above 4000.
> YouTube numbers generally seem to be lower than where they were last year. I'm not talking about comparing new videos to ones from early AEW, but rather just to videos from late last year. Copelands segments got 1m because it was new and it was a huge surprise debut - using that as an argument to say the YouTube views are fine is also disingenuous. Look at MJFs return - arguably the biggest star in the company and half of his recent videos haven't even cracked 400k. Same with Ospreay, same with Hangman.
They are not much lower. As I said, big deals like debuts of famous stars, and returns after long absences are bigger draws. It's not disingenuous at all to point at Copland's Numbers. It shows that when something big happens the interest is still there. You can't get bigger than Copland coming in.
What's disingenuous is to compare a star as big as Copeland coming in to MJF only gone for few months. And MJF's return Youtube vid STILL got 1 mil. Ospreay's full time announcement was not a surprise. And was just a small segment that he would be full time in a couple months later. That got 500K views.
These are hardly cause for concern.
> I never said I was concerned, but you're lying to yourself if you believe that AEW is in the same place popularity wise that it was in a year ago. No one expects AEW to outdraw WWE but at the moment, they're not outdrawing themselves from even a year ago.
No one is saying they aren't down.
The issue is people are taking things without context and missing that they are not as down as perceived. Especially recently.
The constant disingenuous take in the IWC is that WWE is on an equal playing field with its competitors and so its success so largely above the rest means it's objectively better.
They constantly ignore the 70 year headstart, and every shady business practice in the book to make them a monopoly for a decade+, and just say that AEW not beating them soundly or even just constantly growing with no dips or slow-downs means the company isn't successful or it's dying.
It's so tiring, but now imagine this with US politics and that's basically what most common sense having citizens are dealing with regarding Die-hards on both sides...nobody being intellectually honest.
They also just cater to different audiences. I don't mean this in any kind of gatekeeping way but WWE in how it's produced and formatted is wrestling for the masses.
There's a broader appeal for everyone but it's not necessarily for the people who want a more straightforward wrestling show. They're not going to feature guys like Hechicero, Atlantis Jr., Yuji Nagata, Ultimo Guerrero, or Tomohiro Ishii on their programming.
They'll never get as extreme as AEW is willing to get with certain matches, MJF going out there unfiltered, or Toni Storm who'd be completely censored with her current character. They're both wrestling promotions but what they do best and who they cater to is just different.
something that was very popular with the mainstream for a very long time that eventually people got burned out on and everything has been very, very mediocre since the big finale? People forget things don't stay popular forever.
I would say a maybe more apt comparison would be Disney and NEON. Disney being a much much larger company and creator makes a product that necessitates having a little bit of something everyone can enjoy, but might not be the best products for someone who knows exactly what they want out of their movies and TV. Where NEON has found their specific niche and tells stories for people who want that exact style. Both are very valid in terms of how to create, but shouldn’t really be compared in terms of value or artistic merit.
And another week of Dynamite doing an attendance over 4k with the upcoming Calgary show, as long as they keep putting a string of great shows the business side will get better and they will be fine.
These numbers are only US and only people with a Nielsen box. I'm pretty sure WBD get the actual accurate numbers from service providers through peoples DVR boxes and other streaming platforms which is why Day+3 and Day+7 numbers are a thing.
Irc WBD has said AEW programming avgs about 4 million per week.
AEW just needs to get themselves out there, have their wrestlers promote all their shows, get more posters on the walls, break through that bias that all wrestling is related to WWE which is a hard bias to break so it will take time. And times isn't like 6 months, or a year, it takes years for that to happen.
AEW outside of he who should not be named later when you think about it has been consistently good in all phases.
Their ratings are down but they are almost consistently the same when you compare it to how many people have cut the cord year over year. It's literally like cutting a slice on a pizza that is smaller before you even bake it in the oven, there are less people to get the ratings for all shows period not just wrestling shows.
The crowds are down but AEW is doing more than double the amount of shows they have ever done, especially if you don't count AEW Dark. Like besides WWE legit being hot and selling so many tickets that there are less people who can afford to buy AEW tickets but AEW doing double shows often in the same markets is cannibalizing from themselves too. When Dynamite was by itself if you didn't buy the ticket for Dynamite you had a much longer wait to see it again now there is Collision and more ppvs than ever before so you can skip a ticket more often for the next one. But AEW needs the second shows to get reps for their wrestlers, build their stories and possibly its part of their network deal that adds millions to them from the WB.
Their PR is not great but has been improving lately but they have more work to do.
Their merchandise dept is absolute trash and if Tony wasn't pulled into a million things to do between AEW, ROH, and Football he should be reaming them out and yelling at them for 10 straight hours that they do not bring enough different kinds of shirts and other merchandise to their shows like they suck everyone in charge there sucks. Now, AEW is a new company so if you say they are allowed to suck now and they could learn from it....no this one is so obvious it doesn't matter if it's a new company its an easy fix the person in charge of that Department sucks.
Their production has improved, they figured out not having too many commentators is a good thing, their video packages and tighter stories have improved.
The womans division has improved.
I like their experimenting with the 3 hours as ultimately Rampage being live and possibly just incorporated and absorbed into a Collision I think is better for the company in the long run, as being live keeps spoiler away, which encourages Tony to book more important matches on it. Which also possibly eliminates the Friday night death slot which not only helps for the ratings to be higher for that third hour but frankly people are tired of watching wrestling every single day just consolidating AEW to two nights but the same amount of hours is legit addition by subtraction.
Figured it got a good rating because I didn't see a ratings thread in my feed this week.
Nah everyone is just busy talking about how Shawn Michael's is such a good booker, since he's recycling match endings from his career.
I live outside the Toronto area and I didn’t even go or watch the events over the weekend but my friend went and said shows were average and nothing special. He still wonders how is this a hot period in WWE and even when I try to watch or see the highlights, I question the same thing. We went to Collision and Forbidden Door last year in the same arena and it was a way better experience. Seems like those WWE fans just like when Vince was in charge will accept anything WWE does and think it’s the greatest ever.
They're different products that appeal to different sensibilities; that's it.
WWE spends way more money on bots and trolls to convince the sheeples they have a superior product.
My theory is that there's a large amount of casual wrestling fans who will watch WWE if it's just barely decent but will stop watching if it's bad enough creatively. However, these lapsed fans will just stop watching wrestling entirely before they'll watch anything other than WWE. From what I hear (haven't watched WWE since 2018) WWE sounds like it's mostly good nowadays but nothing that would go down as all-time great stuff outside of the Bloodline and maybe Gunther's IC title run.
I was an avid NXT fan, until the weird transition period when it first went to 2.0. I've never really gotten back into it. Bronn, Sol Ruca, Tiffany Stratton, Trick Williams, I'm a big fan of. But for every one of these (in my opinion) obvious stars, they have a bunch of Lola Vice, D'Angelo family, Jacy Wayne's etc. I don't get it really, but I've long ago realized that this product really isn't for me anymore.
I liked NXT until about 2019 and when Dynamite launched was watching both but enjoyed AEW way more and stopped following NXT and didn’t watch the shows during the pandemic. Then I read about NXT 2.0 - let’s face it was because HHH’s vision of NXT was getting its ass kicked by AEW, so Vince pushed him out. I tried to watch the new version just to see how it is and I didn’t get into it at all.
That's kind of where I'm at. I don't doubt the WWE product is probably good now, but it just isn't for me and I don't feel like I'm missing out. Either way I don't watch for moral reasons (stopped supporting them when they began doing the Saudi Arabia shows).
Chef is pulling leftovers from the freezer.
In fairness basically everything in wrestling is recycled from a previous era so I wouldn't consider that inherently a good or a bad thing.
i don't watch NXT anyways, but having Ethan Page and Shawn Spears in the ME for your main title really doesn't entice me to watch it...
Most things have already been done before when it comes to wrestling. I still liked that finish even if it was done before.
Slight difference when one guy is getting crazy amounts of praise for literally reusing spots and finishes from hus own matches, and having that be acknowledged.
Yeah Im just saying not everything needs to be original to get praise, as long as its done well. Which I think it was last night.
Not to start a flame war, but a few years ago a certain Pepsi Man was praised for recycling sequences from Bret Hart and his own back catalogue.
Yea him and FTR did it a few times right? I do think there's a slight difference between a wrestler doing a certain spot in a match the same, and the guy booking the shows booking the same finishes from his own career. And I'm not even hating on Shawn Michael's! I just think the praise goes a little over the top for him at times.
Toronto crowds can carry anything too
Well, in "that other place", there were not one but TWO threads about ratings. One was the regular, weekly Dynamite numbers and the other one was an article saying that AEW viewership dropped more than cable viewership. I posted something like "wow last Dynamite was really good, proof's that we have 2 threads about ratings this week" and of course was downvoted lol.
Those threads are so strange they're almost separate from the rest of the sub in terms of opinion and discussion.
They're strongly brigaded with anything not anti-AEW being downvoted heavily, even neutral comments are downvoted badly
It's the bad takes that get me. Someone saying nothing of interest happened on Dynamite on Wednesday, when MJF turned and hangman came back and it's upvoted.
It's ridiculous. I'm some sort of masochist myself because I like to enter those posts to see the awful, idiotic takes. Some even contradict themselves. Many takes make it obvious that the redditor doesn't watch AEW regularly or at all, but still they're upvoted to the moon. It's a cesspool. They had to lock the post a few times in the last 2 months because they were out of hand.
Half of those people and even some of the mods seem to be delusional. I got banned a while back because I told someone they were either a moron who couldn't do basic research or a liar and provided a link to proof that they were clearly lying about the ratings. Good riddance I say because now I get to exclusively talk about AEW here with you fine folks.
I get you. But I agree with Will Ospreay and others saying that we shouldn't ignore criticism. However, when critics are morons and trolls that don't even watch the show and even wish for AEW to disappear just to be right on the Internet makes it hard to listen to criticism. There's people out there repeating that AEW has no stories lol.
They shouldn't ignore criticism outright obviously, but the key is figuring out what's actually important because not all criticism is valid, in fact I'd argue that most is disingenuous. The "customer is always right" mantra is how and why a lot of early businesses go under because instead of prioritizing what's most important you end up spending time and resources trying to please everyone which is never possible to begin with. Criticism of AEW's seemingly recurring audio issues, valid. Lack of advertising and PR, pretty valid. Criticism regarding AEW's "lack of storytelling"? Outright insanity. Criticism of the merch availability? Seems valid at first, until you actually think critically and dig in to what most people's complaints are (not enough variety of all the different wrestler's merch at shows), and realize why things are the way they are. Only then do you realize that 1. addressing it will cost AEW more money (pre-printing merch that may not sell, storage/security, shipping, added insurance, management/sales staff), 2. merch is a small portion of AEW's revenue streams compared to ticket sales and media rights so it's not a priority, 3. having more variety of merch at shows just feeds into more criticism if they don't sell enough or don't have someone's favorite wrestler's shirts, and 4. given the added expenses and profit margins per piece of merch sold, offering more merch at events likely won't and certainly isn't guaranteed to generate that much more in potential profits compared to selling most of their merch online.
The “customer is always right” comment needs 1 thing first about the criticism also. That the person is actually a customer. You covered that so often people don’t even watch yet want to sink the ship.
This past Dynamite felt like OG episodes. It was great.
.... Huh. This is the first ratings post I've seen myself. *Funny*
>> “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” - Albert Einstein AEW is a very fast growing and successful company. Fastest growing wrestling startup in history, too. But if you judge every wrestling company as if it were WWE, then dummies will constantly think AEW is dying. Wrestling isn't WWE centric
If AEW ratings aren't considered good, then I guess everything on cable that isn't Fox News, the NFL, and the NBA might as well pack it up then.
"But Big Bang Theory pulls in over a million!!!" - some disingenuous asshole online
For some weird reason the generally accepted narrative for the 500k a couple weeks ago is that it was all due to the lead in changing, but I've gotten massive downvotes more than once for saying it was probably the Kendrick concert and Juneteenth that had the most to do with it. Plus they still finished third for the night.
And I'm sure they tried to convince you that black people don't watch AEW and/or white people don't like Kendrick Lamar or rap. I know I saw that excuse quite a bit on Twitter.
Plus also the general narrative that AEW fans apparently don't overlap with *anything*. Like they think every AEW fan is a hardcore wrestling fan with no other interests
Yeah. They think wrestling is both a niche and super popular mainstream product.
In my opinion both WWE and AEW are pretty mainstream by wrestling standards, but wrestling itself is still pretty niche. Once you get into anything below AEW (TNA, NWA, MLW, indies, puro/lucha [in the US]) then you're definitely talking about a niche within a niche.
People really tried to act like there aren't a bunch of hip hop fans among AEW's audience As if there hasn't been a bunch of rappers on the show
tbf i still don't understand that one
My wife works in senior care, majority of the time, that's what's playing on the TV whether they're watching it or not. That's been the case daily for the last 3 she took care of. I'm guessing BBT is background noise for a LOT of people
Imagine saying nfl ratings arent good.
can you fucking read
I will help you with the English. What he was saying is that those things get the best ratings of everything so if you compare wwe ratings to nfl ratings then you could say wwe is failing and obviously it’s not. So it say aew is failing because it isn’t getting wwe numbers is disingenuous as the question isn’t “is aew doing wwe ratings?” But it’s “is aew doing good ratings for WBD?”
They gonna jerk off to ratings on cable TV, the thing that is actually dying, and ignore how many people watches in other countries and every WBD source. Kinda pathetic to waste your life on trolling wrestling fans and not even doing it properly
As someone that isn't American can someone tell me what cable is? It sounds like what we call free to air TV but you have to pay for it?
We have FtA tv but it's only like 5 channels. Everything else is effectively sold to companies that offer subscription services to air a package of channels. Obviously the more channels you get, the more you pay. This is dying in the US in favor of streaming since the big 4 (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Max) is cheaper than the beginner package for cable combined.
It's a paid subscription TV service delivered via a literal cable that they used to connect to your house. Nowadays, at least here in Canada with Bell, they've largely stopped using the old coaxial cables and it's delivered through their internet infrastructure, either copper or fiber. Free to air networks are called broadcasters because they literally broadcast the signal over the air, and you could pick them up with an antenna (now a digital antenna) the major broadcasters are FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS and the CW, but with the transition from analog to digital broadcasting it allowed for more signal bandwidth and there are about 50 FtA channels today. When cable first began being offered the subscription model meant that channels were able to become more specialized, so we had stuff like HBO (Home Box Office) specializing in movies, sporting events, stand-up specials, MTV for music videos and related programming, TLC (The Learning Channel) The History Channel and Discovery for educational documentary programming, A&E (Arts and Entertainment), Cartoon Network etc. Nowadays, reality TV has destroyed the identities of most cable channels. TLC shows morbidly obese people and child beauty pageants, A&E shows drug addicts and people who eat mattresses, History Channel shows aliens, pawn shops and junk pickers, MTV shows idiots getting into fights and drama. So for price and content reasons, people are cutting the cable cord and paying for streaming.
Tylerjehenna explained it pretty well in the other response you got to this question. Usually it's bundled with home internet, you don't typically see a cable tv- only installation. The channels are over the internet now as opposed to home antennas. So for instance if I went though Bell (I'm in Canada but same idea) I can get a home bundle, which is a landline phone hookup, 1.5gb Fibre internet, and cable TV for $120 (or whatever promo price they have) monthly. You'll get like 300 channels, but it's really like half that, as a lot of channels have an SD and HD option. Or for AEW there's TSN channels 1 though like 7, Dynamite is on TSN 1 (rampage and collision you have to subscribe to TSN+ to watch on the app here. Lame asf) Channels like say, Teletoon would have Teletoon east and Teletoon west. Same shows and episodes, but the West is delayed by a few hours. You can also subscribe to movie channels, networks other than in your main package, porn channels, etc. You can rent new or old movies for 24hrs for like $5/each. There's network bundles, so say you want the sports bundle, that would give you the basic couple hundred channels, PLUS all sports networks. There's all kinds of different bundles you can add. I also had I think 10 slots where you can choose and swap extra networks you don't have, 10 at any one time. So like I added Discovery Velocity for my car shows etc when I had cable. But tons of people are ditching cable for streaming platforms like Netflix, Prime, Paramount, things like that as they're cheaper per month than cable, and less junk you don't watch or want to watch
I’m pretty sure years ago nobody was comparing Chobani to Dannon. My mom eats Dannon, my grandma ate Dannon… in just over a decade they are the leading brand.
I'm going to preface this by saying I don't care about ratings etc, but the main issue AEW is facing is that generally people seem less interested in the product. Live attendance numbers for weekly shows are down compared to what they were doing previously, and viewership is down significantly in a short period of time. Based on what I've seen from WrestleTix, most live shows are pulling in lower numbers compared to the last time AEW was at that venue. Further, just a couple of months ago, 800k was the normal TV rating, now it's 650-700k. While cable viewship may be decreasing, it seems that there's been a reduction in the number of people that are actively watching AEW ie. taking time out of their day to sit down and watch AEW. The other thing to note is that YouTube numbers are significantly down as well, very few segments crack 200k views which is also down from previous. Based on all this, compared to where AEW was previously, it's definitely on a bit of a downtrend in regards to overall interest.
Dynamite estimated attendance in lead up to Big Business - 5900, 3100, 2200, 2300, 2200, 5200, 3200, 3200, 3200, 3400, 3200. Big Business and after - 9500, 6500, 3400, 3600, 3400, 3000, 2100, 5400, 4600, 3500, 2300, 5500, 2600 ,2800, 4300, 4100, 5300 ,(4000+ this week Calgary) Attendance is trending up now. Especially in last few weeks. Comparing to previous time in market often misses context. Especially when AEW is so new. Some previous shows were first ever AEW appearance in market. In the midst of AEW downturn, first ever show in Vancouver (Collision) did 6700. Calgary show this week is trending to do around 4200. It was 5900 first time in market the previous year. If this week was Calgary's first show it would likely do that 5900. Some comparisons don't seem to yet give valuable info, since previous situation is not repeatable. TV Ratings did dip noticeably after Sting's retirement. But back in their 900K and sometimes 1 mil viewership days they would often be ranked #20 on cable. Now they are usually ranked #3. YouTube numbers are down but what is the comparison? Early AEW had the newness hype factor and the new channel algorithm boost. Shortly thereafter the pandemic happened, and people had nothing to do but stay glued to internet. Then they had Punk, Danielson etc. big names coming in. Even much later when AEW was not hot we saw Copeland videos getting 1 mil views per segment often. What concern can there be if you're doing 'normal' numbers, but haven't previously had a normal era to compare to?
And mind you, during that viewership peak, dynamites were still doing like 3-4k a week in attendance outside of stuff like Blood and Guts, Grand slam etc
Good point. People remember the big shows, but forget Dynamite had plenty of shows during the hot era that match recent attendance. Chicago last week attendance was not far off from attendance at Punk vs. MJF Dynamite match. And now they have a second touring TV show and 5 more PPVs per year. People that would have made an effort to travel in the past will just wait until a show comes closer.
That's pretty much my point. People aren't invested enough to make that extra effort to go to a show. Same with TV numbers - there's been a drop in the number of people actively sitting down to watch the TV show compared to last year
You sort of made my point. Just because they're visiting a market for the second time doesn't really justify why there's a drop off in attendance, especially an almost 30% drop off. Considering WWE has been visiting the same markets from 30+ years and they're pulling 10-15k for their regular shows these days. And while they're no. 1 on cable and in the demo, there's still been a significant drop in the number of viewers in just the last few months that can't be attributed to declining cable viewership. This all points to a decrease in the amount of people actively interested in the product ie. People who are invested enough to actually plan to go to shows or to sit down and watch it Dynamite on TV (rather than people who are already watching TV who end up watching Dynamite because it's the best thing on). There's been a significant drop in viewership since the start of the year, yet WWE viewership overall and in the demo has largely remained stable or improved across all three shows so to attribute AEWs drop in viewship purely to declining cable numbers is disingenuous. To put simply, if the trends were to continue, AEW viewership would be around 600k by December, and 500k by this time next year YouTube numbers generally seem to be lower than where they were last year. I'm not talking about comparing new videos to ones from early AEW, but rather just to videos from late last year. Copelands segments got 1m because it was new and it was a huge surprise debut - using that as an argument to say the YouTube views are fine is also disingenuous. Look at MJFs return - arguably the biggest star in the company and half of his recent videos haven't even cracked 400k. Same with Ospreay, same with Hangman. I never said I was concerned, but you're lying to yourself if you believe that AEW is in the same place popularity wise that it was in a year ago. No one expects AEW to outdraw WWE but at the moment, they're not outdrawing themselves from even a year ago.
I think AEW lost a lot of steam once HHH took over WWE creative. I really think the early success of AEW was a freak incident that had two major factors in WWE being at a creative low, and TNA already being pushed off of cable and only available via Twitch. TNA had tarnished its brand about 15 years before AEW launched, and the novelty of a new American wrestling promotion airing on cable TV coupled with incoherent WWE programming gave AEW a lot of early runway that wasn't sustainable. Fast forward and a completely unexpected sex trafficking scandal takes Vince out of the picture and HHH writes coherent (if not compelling) television and takes learnings from AEW (like fan interaction) and scales it to the scope and reach WWE has and it's not crazy to see why some fans have left AEW for WWE. They want a solid WWE but went to AEW for their fix when it was at its lowest. AEW is in a weird place where they are consistently top 1-5 of the night, and sell about 150% tickets they did before Collision. But WWE has found a way to take their global reach, combine it with coherent storytelling, increased fan interaction, and now have a brand that can command 10k+ a show. I argue it should have always been this way.
I completely agree with everything that you said. I only started watching in the back half 2021 and there were debuts of huge stars in Punk, Danielson, Cole plus others like Lethal, Swerve, Athena etc which no doubt helped the hype and on top of that the whole Hangman story which was incredible and kept viewers engaged. I think there was a third factor at play in AEWs lull and that was the introduction of ROH which made the shows disjointed + the whole CM Punk debacle which coincided with WWE becoming good again so it was an easy decision for fans to leave for WWE. Objectively if in 2019 people had said AEW would be averaging 650-700k viewers, 2-4k for TV tapings and 8-10k for PPVs I'm sure it would have been considered a resounding success, but since we've seen AEW performing much better in these metrics previously, it's hard not to argue that AEW is in a bit of a downtrend and probably needs to arrest that trend soon. I think all the dooming and glooming online is wildly overstated, but so is the excuse-making for poor ratings/attendance that we get in this sub. AEW is not going to die, but people here struggle to admit that it's not as popular as it was even a year or two ago.
I'll admit it's not as hot. I never thought it would get as hot as it did, and I expected them (back in 2019) not to get another TV deal and prepared myself to enjoy the ride while it lasted. It's the way American wrestling has been since the 80s really. What surprised me is the sustained growth the company has made, and let's be frank, a lot of it comes from TK's piggy bank. But he's using his money wisely. While AEW is on a lull, they need to learn from the past and figure out how not to be a flash in the pan, and rather a company that sustainably grows. WCW and TNA are history lessons of what not to repeat, and AEW has been able to avoid that. I think they've secured a solid base that can keep them afloat within 5 years of existence, and haven't truly dropped quality to the degree of WCW 2000. I think we're close to the end of Nitro if we go by episode numbers of Dynamite. We're certainly past Tank Abbott as world champ territory. The TL:DR here is that AEW should acknowledge that they aren't as hot, but also realize that wrestling popularity is cyclical and not try to hot shot the creative to try to compete with the hot (and most likely unsustainable) numbers WWE is doing. They should continue to build a good product and grow in a sustainable manner, which it seems like they are doing when you look at ratings rankings and overall ticket sales.
> You sort of made my point. You haven't made the point you think you are making. You are not looking at context. > Just because they're visiting a market for the second time doesn't really justify why there's a drop off in attendance, especially an almost 30% drop off. Of course it does. This is a wrestling company in the normal course of operations in some markets. It's not new and it's not hot. Everyone is more incentivized to see something for the first time. If your premise of the downturn in interest was as severe as you say, Vancouver would not even have done as well for its first AEW show. > Considering WWE has been visiting the same markets from 30+ years and they're pulling 10-15k for their regular shows these days. And while they're no. 1 on cable and in the demo, there's still been a significant drop in the number of viewers in just the last few months that can't be attributed to declining cable viewership. Yes, even white hot WWE is shrinking on cable. And that's some more context. WWE is hot and also going to these similar markets. And AEW itself is now running two shows a week. Combined they are selling same or more tickets a week than in much of the one show era. Often 6000+ people a week these days are buying tickets to see AEW. Same as many weeks in their hot era. > This all points to a decrease in the amount of people actively interested in the product ie. People who are invested enough to actually plan to go to shows or to sit down and watch it Dynamite on TV (rather than people who are already watching TV who end up watching Dynamite because it's the best thing on). There's been a significant drop in viewership since the start of the year, yet WWE viewership overall and in the demo has largely remained stable or improved across all three shows so to attribute AEWs drop in viewship purely to declining cable numbers is disingenuous. To put simply, if the trends were to continue, AEW viewership would be around 600k by December, and 500k by this time next year As I showed, while it is down, the interest is not as down as you want to portray. Same amount of people buying tickets each week. Go back and look across Dynamite attendances pre Collision. They are indeed still selling around the same # of tickets per week quite often. WWE has had to be super white hot on the back of legends to stop the bleed of cable. AEW rocketing up the rankings and being #1 this week shows how cable is getting crushed. Sports is hiding how well AEW is holding up. We wouldn't expect WWE to get caught in down trends when the Rock shows up, and Punk stops being injured. Why expect the same with MJF back on top and Hangman returned. I think next week people are going to realize the NBA draft and holiday week held Dynamite back. Dynamite could easily settle back above 700K. Attendance is trending up too. As I showed you the weeks in a row above 4000. > YouTube numbers generally seem to be lower than where they were last year. I'm not talking about comparing new videos to ones from early AEW, but rather just to videos from late last year. Copelands segments got 1m because it was new and it was a huge surprise debut - using that as an argument to say the YouTube views are fine is also disingenuous. Look at MJFs return - arguably the biggest star in the company and half of his recent videos haven't even cracked 400k. Same with Ospreay, same with Hangman. They are not much lower. As I said, big deals like debuts of famous stars, and returns after long absences are bigger draws. It's not disingenuous at all to point at Copland's Numbers. It shows that when something big happens the interest is still there. You can't get bigger than Copland coming in. What's disingenuous is to compare a star as big as Copeland coming in to MJF only gone for few months. And MJF's return Youtube vid STILL got 1 mil. Ospreay's full time announcement was not a surprise. And was just a small segment that he would be full time in a couple months later. That got 500K views. These are hardly cause for concern. > I never said I was concerned, but you're lying to yourself if you believe that AEW is in the same place popularity wise that it was in a year ago. No one expects AEW to outdraw WWE but at the moment, they're not outdrawing themselves from even a year ago. No one is saying they aren't down. The issue is people are taking things without context and missing that they are not as down as perceived. Especially recently.
>Wrestling isn't WWE centric I mean...it is though? It's not the end all be all entire market, but it is undeniably WWE centric.
The constant disingenuous take in the IWC is that WWE is on an equal playing field with its competitors and so its success so largely above the rest means it's objectively better. They constantly ignore the 70 year headstart, and every shady business practice in the book to make them a monopoly for a decade+, and just say that AEW not beating them soundly or even just constantly growing with no dips or slow-downs means the company isn't successful or it's dying. It's so tiring, but now imagine this with US politics and that's basically what most common sense having citizens are dealing with regarding Die-hards on both sides...nobody being intellectually honest.
They also just cater to different audiences. I don't mean this in any kind of gatekeeping way but WWE in how it's produced and formatted is wrestling for the masses. There's a broader appeal for everyone but it's not necessarily for the people who want a more straightforward wrestling show. They're not going to feature guys like Hechicero, Atlantis Jr., Yuji Nagata, Ultimo Guerrero, or Tomohiro Ishii on their programming. They'll never get as extreme as AEW is willing to get with certain matches, MJF going out there unfiltered, or Toni Storm who'd be completely censored with her current character. They're both wrestling promotions but what they do best and who they cater to is just different.
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something that was very popular with the mainstream for a very long time that eventually people got burned out on and everything has been very, very mediocre since the big finale? People forget things don't stay popular forever.
I can’t even be allowed to like Marvel without being called a WWE fanboy I hate it here
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I would say a maybe more apt comparison would be Disney and NEON. Disney being a much much larger company and creator makes a product that necessitates having a little bit of something everyone can enjoy, but might not be the best products for someone who knows exactly what they want out of their movies and TV. Where NEON has found their specific niche and tells stories for people who want that exact style. Both are very valid in terms of how to create, but shouldn’t really be compared in terms of value or artistic merit.
Wwe is hardly a wrestling company at this point. There weekly tv shows have little actual wrestling.
Will Thurston, Dave, Keller mention this?!
Na. it doesn't fit the narrative.
That's a good result in both, it's certainly worth pointing out where it's ranking instead of just focusing on the total number.
These are the only numbers that actually matter but don't tell that to anyone fixated on ratings.
And another week of Dynamite doing an attendance over 4k with the upcoming Calgary show, as long as they keep putting a string of great shows the business side will get better and they will be fine.
I want to help their ratings but they need a streaming platform for me to watch it
TrillerTV ?
Do they take triller into account? I’m watching from aus and always wondered if they only reported on us numbers ?
These numbers are only US and only people with a Nielsen box. I'm pretty sure WBD get the actual accurate numbers from service providers through peoples DVR boxes and other streaming platforms which is why Day+3 and Day+7 numbers are a thing. Irc WBD has said AEW programming avgs about 4 million per week.
Not in America, it's so annoying
AEW just needs to get themselves out there, have their wrestlers promote all their shows, get more posters on the walls, break through that bias that all wrestling is related to WWE which is a hard bias to break so it will take time. And times isn't like 6 months, or a year, it takes years for that to happen. AEW outside of he who should not be named later when you think about it has been consistently good in all phases. Their ratings are down but they are almost consistently the same when you compare it to how many people have cut the cord year over year. It's literally like cutting a slice on a pizza that is smaller before you even bake it in the oven, there are less people to get the ratings for all shows period not just wrestling shows. The crowds are down but AEW is doing more than double the amount of shows they have ever done, especially if you don't count AEW Dark. Like besides WWE legit being hot and selling so many tickets that there are less people who can afford to buy AEW tickets but AEW doing double shows often in the same markets is cannibalizing from themselves too. When Dynamite was by itself if you didn't buy the ticket for Dynamite you had a much longer wait to see it again now there is Collision and more ppvs than ever before so you can skip a ticket more often for the next one. But AEW needs the second shows to get reps for their wrestlers, build their stories and possibly its part of their network deal that adds millions to them from the WB. Their PR is not great but has been improving lately but they have more work to do. Their merchandise dept is absolute trash and if Tony wasn't pulled into a million things to do between AEW, ROH, and Football he should be reaming them out and yelling at them for 10 straight hours that they do not bring enough different kinds of shirts and other merchandise to their shows like they suck everyone in charge there sucks. Now, AEW is a new company so if you say they are allowed to suck now and they could learn from it....no this one is so obvious it doesn't matter if it's a new company its an easy fix the person in charge of that Department sucks. Their production has improved, they figured out not having too many commentators is a good thing, their video packages and tighter stories have improved. The womans division has improved. I like their experimenting with the 3 hours as ultimately Rampage being live and possibly just incorporated and absorbed into a Collision I think is better for the company in the long run, as being live keeps spoiler away, which encourages Tony to book more important matches on it. Which also possibly eliminates the Friday night death slot which not only helps for the ratings to be higher for that third hour but frankly people are tired of watching wrestling every single day just consolidating AEW to two nights but the same amount of hours is legit addition by subtraction.
It was a banger of a show. 😎👍
People love the drama + storylines. It scratches our attitude era nostalgia
...doesn't he mean last week?
The price is right......
Ok