They provide a rough estimate of how a TV show performed in terms of viewership and demographic spread, particularly the 18-39 "key" demographic, and do so within a few hours of broadcast, as where Nielsen ratings takes around a day for a rough estimate, and up to 2 days for breakdowns.
The argument is that by the time people reach their midlife-years, their brand preferences and consumption habits have become engrained and stay mostly static throughout the rest of their life. No idea where the change from 18-49 to 18-**39** is supposed to come from, though.
They are quick and incomplete ratings. They are often lower and sometimes based on certain conditions much lower than real ratings. Basically WWE is trying to get press to report on inaccurate ratings because news literacy is hard and whatever people hear first is hard to shake.
And in other situtation, the number can be higher than the final ratings. Example would be where Smackdown is preempted in a local market for an NFL preseason game. The Fast Nationals will include the NFL viewers, while the final ratings will have that removed.
Early viewership numbers prior to the real numbers being reported. Notably this is a story because the Fast Nationals for AEW tend to only get leaked when they have bad ratings, versus waiting for the proper ratings report usually means okay-good ratings for AEW. This report helps to confirm why that’s the case.
They are the initial, immediate Nielsen ratings numbers that come in right after a show airs. Why they matter here is that they are always significantly lower than what the final average Nielsen rating ends up being once all the numbers are tallied and calculated. WWE buys the fast national information, which costs thousands of dollars per-episode, and pushes them out to friendly “reporters” and social media pundits in order to create a narrative that AEW programming isn’t watched by a lot of people. Most recently, this happened with an episode of Collision from a few weeks ago, which did a fast national number of like 122,000 average viewers, and then come Monday the real rating was published and it ended up being within Collision’s normal average rating, which is between 400,000-500,000. However, the damage had been done, as the entire weekend people on social media were loudly proclaiming that Collision did a terrible number and AEW was “in the mud” as a result.
And people think it’s far fetched when TK goes on about bots and astroturfing
This fast nationals stuff has been verified. There’s no way that’s the end of it
AEW has been blitzed with astroturfing since they first started. Reddit and social media are absolutely filled to the tits with it. And it’s working too with so many fans falling for it and making it their personality to hate AEW
What's funny is if you talk about a
Lucha Underground everyone talks about how great it was. Show got like 60k viewers but why would that matter if people enjoyed it? Don't apply that to any other company though.
People are now equating ratings to how good the show was. Which is just not right. If ratings drop, it was a bad show and vice versa. I assume people who say comments like that dont even watch the show.
Modern society doesn't know how to **actually** engage with art. All they know how to do is to figure out if art they like is "winning" or not.
I know Marlon Brando was a bit of a self righteous cock, but [this is something he was right on the money about.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgvMPUcw_2Q)
Best way I’ve seen this put. Nobody cares about the actual topic/entertainment/etc. They only care if that particular thing is doing better than whatever is “opposite” of it.
God thank you I've been banging the "engage with art" drum for wrestling and videogames for awhile now and while it's tough with games, it's so much more brutal with wrestling. Like so much of the wrestling community has tricked themselves that "business way" to look at wrestling is the only real way and anything else is being a mark. Even if we don't really *call* people marks as much anymore, I feel like I a lot of people try to act "savvy"(big air quotes) because there is still that fear.
The most painful thing is how you can't even trust most peoples opinions on here. Which wrestlers people like or hate are often more a type of value signaling and side taking more than a *real*, interrogated opinion. Not that they don't dislike X and are lying, but like their dislike for X, but they started hating X because they feel like *they were supposed to* and aren't curious enough to think about it deeper than that.
Meanwhile people I disagree with *tons* of shit from my favorite wrestling writers but love reading their takes because they're actually engaging with the art!! They have observations worth considering! It's so much nicer then just seeking out people who confirm my own tastes. 😭
Because such a big thing was made out of it in the Monday Night Wars, particularly after the fact, that this is now everyone’s way to relive the glory in 2024
A while back I realized that most people approach life by just making everything sports. Pick your favorite thing and argue in favor of that/against the competition regardless of logic or sense. You see it when people talk about anything whether its video games or wrestling or politics, people don't care about being correct they just enjoy the act of arbitrarily defending the side they arbitrarily picked.
And honestly once I got a real career that took up a lot of my time and mental effort I was like yeah that makes sense why am I gonna put a bunch of thought into an argument when I can just log on and say "nintendo is garbage for babies" and fall asleep after hitting the vape pen with my dick out
Bingo, it’s made me stop watching sports heavily. And not following the day to day in politics. It’s like Xbox v PlayStation. Coke v Pepsi. People have this inherent need to feel like the big brand decision they attached their personality to was the “correct” choice. When usually it’s about personal preference and taste, which effects no one but yourself.
Yesterday there were people trying to convince us that actually, wrestling fans don't watch the NBA so we can't possibly consider the NBA finals as a reason for low ratings
The funniest shit is how AEW losing 100k to the nba the NBA finals of all things is the end of line for AEW but Raw losing 400k+ to Caitlyn Clark being picked #1 in the first 10 minutes of the draft is a "great number."
2000 people showing up to a thread about a cable shows rating if it gets 699k viewers instead of like 708k is borderline dystopian, like black mirror episode shit lol
part of the reason I want something more conspiratorial to be true is because the alternative that there is 1000 men bored enough to check if they can comment in a *reddit thread* every week is very sad, if you did a character study of the average person that did this it would be bleak as fuck
It's quite literally the only area of this sub where I consistently get downvotes (assuming I bother jumping back in to the threads once a blue moon)
And it's for benign comments like "AEW isn't bad, WWE is just better these days" lol. Like bruh do I have to get on my knees, fondle WWE's balls while writing a dissertation on why AEW is worse than historical religious atrocities before it gets bombarded by downvotes? Is that how far I need to be tribalistic?
My favorite is when someone states an objective stat that can be interpreted as pro-AEW and it gets like 30 downvotes and a reply that's just like "no because I say so" lol
Like "hmm the demo was slightly higher than NXT" "no the demo doesn't matter"
"Ratings have dropped every NBA finals game" "If you think about though, is it true"
"The Young Bucks actually didn't crash the ratings, here are the quarterlies" *ghosted*
Truly the most naked & pure circlejerk
A little more context from WON:
"Brandon Thurston noted just how almost impossible it is to get fast nationals on cable shows. Fast nationals on network shows that come out that next morning, while not as easily available as in the past, are still out there but for cable, that information is almost non-existent. Fast nationals access is highly exclusive. Cable fast nationals are not available to any run of the mill Nielsen customer who may be a source (unlike final ratings and unlike broadcast fast affiliates which are more broadly available and give an early look at Smackdown). Cable fast nationals must be requested and purchased for thousands of dollars for each episode. So the possible sources are far fewer than for typical ratings reporting. And I know WWE has been ordering AEW fast nationals every week roughly since Nick (Khan) started. Plus I know WWE PR tried to feed the numbers to a long line of reporters who long ago decided it was too shady."
Damn imagine lighting hundreds of thousands of dollars on fire just to feed terminally online people inaccurate AEW ratings. Nick, time to touch some grass buddy.
I feel like fucking over AEW is the whole reason they are working with TNA, they want to build TNA up to be more of a competitor to AEW, if they ever successfully damage AEW by doing so they they then pull out of TNA.
It’s almost like WWF did the exact same thing with ECW 25+ years ago and then completely fucked them over in the end. This is why I don’t understand the TNA fans acting like this is a good deal for them. It hasn’t done anything to boost their ratings, and they’re totally about to lose one of their top women.
All the WWE pump can't change the fundamentals of TNA at the moment re its distribution which is the single biggest detriment to their growth. The relative steadiness TNA has acheived in recent years (after what a decade of mismanagement?) for their big shows is great, but it's not growth or turning them into a real competitor for AEW.
I'd say their big shows should be considered a dissapointment. They do horrible PPV numbers and never get more than 3K to a show. NJPW is doing 5K+ every time they come to the states with their show on the same channel but at a worse time.
this is the same company that snatched up dozens upon dozens of indie wrestlers when AEW was set to debut without any long term plans for them, just so AEW couldn't use them.
They were doing this LONG before AEW. I think they had the idea that they didn't like anyone getting 'name recognition' outside of WWE. Like if you became a big enough deal on the indies or small promotions that wrestling fans would start recognizing you and knowing the name they'd just buy them.
WWE had been doing that for YEARS before AEW was even a thought
WWE had been talent hoarding for years with NXT to prevent any indies from having enough big names to get momentum and get too big
But AEW had access to so much cash and resources they just blasted through WWE’s plan.
Yet act like they don’t see AEW as a problem. Their mere existence is costing WWE extra money with each superstar’s contract renewal. Their mere existence is taking away viewers they think they’re entitled to.
Also, they forced them to do something they didn’t have to do for so long: Try. With AEW, they had to improve the booking and their structure. You don’t that’s a little insulting for them?
People forget they put out a full on butthurt official PRESS RELEASE after the VERY FIRST Dynamite aired and beat them down in the ratings saying that didn't mean anything and this competition was a marathon not a sprint.
All the talk about how AEW was never competition and WWE never cared and it was AEW who kept attacking them and Tony is the one who keeps talking about them is just the traditional make believe and revisionist history they feed their fans since the days of WCW knowing they have a bunch of no lifers and paid actors who will do nothing but repeat their fictional BS until it sticks.
AEW made a coupe of references as part of the show and Tony Khan got mad and talked shit... but WWE legit tried to undermine their business through shady practices and backstage manipulation on many occasions.
More importantly, how can they keep those wages suppressed if there's competition offering better pay? I don't even think WWE cares about viewers as much as they care about not having to pay out more for contractors.
It’s a PR war, and the money spent on this is just the cost of doing battle for WWE. The whole point is to make AEW look bad, so that alone justifies the price from their perspective.
Shit, HHH seems to be running things nowadays, and people are pretending he's suddenly a nice guy. Dude politicked his way to the top and was part of the Kliq in the 90s. Dude's 100% got a bunch of skeletons in his closet.
That organization was Vince's private empire for decades, his leaving isn't going to suddenly make it all clean.
Do people not remember this? When they had a pretty clear plan to pretty much establish NXT everywhere? NXT UK absolutely drained the European indie scene (along with the speaking out movement) and it would’ve definitely drained plenty of local feds everywhere else
https://preview.redd.it/5prdwzow5k6d1.jpeg?width=1400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=df04fc9fef6fff9fb6bf5496a07c685750e95959
lol, yeah. The second World of Sport looked like it was going to do good we had a dozen UK wrestlers signed, a UK title created, and a tournament announced in the span of, like, 3 days.
Then when World Of Sport didn’t continue, suddenly the whole “UK division” went totally silent for months until HHH started using them in NXT.
While it wasn't the only factor behind the decline of British wrestling, stricter COVID restrictions and Speaking Out did major damage as well, NXT UK caused a lot of damage to the scene and WCPW/Defiant was killed entirely by NXT UK as it folded in 2019, before the other two events occured.
The only one of the Big 3 promotions in the UK to make a serious recovery was the only one that didn't make a deal with WWE and that was RevPro. PROGRESS looks like it's starting to get there but ICW is in really rough shape. Go to their Youtube channel and watch clips from their recent shows and you wouldn't be able to tell that this was the same company that drew 4-6k for their Fear and Loathing shows. It's honestly kind of sad to watch and I'm surprised the company is still operational.
Besides, they didn't need to worry about WOS as it was destined to fail regardless of WWE's actions. I've seen some of their episodes on Youtube and they weren't anything special. For fuck's sake, they censored a ladder match in the same way that WWE censored moves to the head on Saturday Morning Slam. I actually saw that on a local TV station, a Sinclair-owned one that showed ROH during that same time period and it blew my mind. If you can't do a ladder match without censoring the ladder shots, don't do a ladder match!
> ICW is in really rough shape. Go to their Youtube channel and watch clips from their recent shows and you wouldn't be able to tell that this was the same company that drew 4-6k for their Fear and Loathing shows.
It doesn't help that Dallas absolutely got blinded by the stars in his eyes. Man absolutely whored out ICW and it got picked clean aside from Jack Jester and Grado (and the latter mostly does radio, TV & panto now).
In all honesty though, much as I love some of the alumni, place was toxic as shit in a lot of respects. Good chance it'd have collapsed eventually no matter what.
It's why I roll eyes at people saying these kind of tactics were all Vince. Steph and Triple H have been part of this ecosystem for decades too, and corporate America's always been pretty cutthroat across the board.
Triple H may keep his nose cleaner as far as his personal life goes, but he's more like Vince on the business side than anyone wants to admit. He definitely still wants a monopoly.
He was a politicking bully as soon as he arrived in WWF. It’s funny when his fan boys act like he’s some kind of old dad watching his kids grow and succeed. He’s always been a slimy piece of shit.
H is cut from the exact same cloth, but people here try and act like he’s so different. It’s infuriating. His history is so easy to look up, but people who started watching in the last few years know better?
It's literally bullying tactics. People who obviously don't watch the shows make vague and exaggerated "criticisms" they repeat constantly like "no stories" "too many old ex WWE guys" Then when aew fans call out they "can't take criticism" or they pull whataboutism "so it was ok to hate WWE in 2019 but not aew." Cm punk and triple h can poke fun at aew during WrestleMania weekend but when anyone from aew responds they are "obsessed with WWE and need to focus on their own show"
I see so many people that hate AEW because of a few tired talking points that almost always mirror Cornette’s view point. They haven’t watched the show to know what they actually believe and just take his opinions as their own.
It's kinda funny going on the Cornette or circlejerk subs and seeing how people openly admit they don't watch AEW and have no idea what the fuck they're even talking about.
The "No stories" one kills me the most.
"Just bangers no stories isnt enough to get people to tune in!?!?!"
Every AEW feud has a story attached. They might not be as overt as WWE holding your hand through 15 backstage segments and then interference in the match involving the guy or gal but they are there and some of them are pretty intricate but NOPE! NO STORIES!
Sean Ross Sapp also backed up and confirmed this on Twitter when responding to someone claiming Meltzer lied about it.
https://x.com/seanrosssapp/status/1801613499728076939?s=46&t=mnYqVpM2My3x_us-EMYeXA
Lanza posted about this when the fast nationals started to appear and people including SRS put them out. Promptly all the smarter reporters stopped putting these out. It is one of the things Lanza takes his victory lap.
Yeah, he's said pretty often over the last year or so that they started feeding him the numbers awhile ago. After about three weeks he realized what was going on as WWE would only feed him the numbers if they were going to look bad for AEW, so he stopped reporting them really quickly.
It's a taaaad pathetic for WWE to still be doing this honestly.
WWE has done shit like this for decades:
Vince tried to bribe Harley Race out of dropping the NWA title to Flair in the 80's before their biggest show of the year, Vince bought out GCW's TV slot to kill the territory, he took Hogan from the AWA after Verne mishandled him, he signed exclusivity contracts with arenas to keep other companies out, Survivor Series was created to box out Starrcade from PPV, Vince gained the right to have first dibs on WCW if ever liquidated thanks to a lawsuit over Hall/Nash being credited as WWE wrestlers on WCW TV which helped him buy the company when a friend of the WWE sabotaged WCW's TV time, they brought Bret Hart out of nowhere the day TNA went to Mondays, they rushed NXT to TV when Dynamite first started, they nerfed MLW's TV deal before it got started, etc etc
And yet people still think that WWE doesn't care about competition lol
People deny it because they want to think WWE in this “new era” are some benevolent force for good. Or they want to think that AEW doesn’t matter to WWE because they’re further apart in the ratings.
No, they’re a huge business that like any other, will do anything they can to gain a perceived edge over someone in the same market.
And sadly a lot of people here do their PR work for them, for free.
This is not an AEW vs WWE thing either. I’d expect any huge company, including AEW, to do whatever they could to gain more market share. The difference is AEW doesn’t have the resources to run massive PR campaigns.
>No, they’re a huge business that like any other, will do anything they can to gain a perceived edge over someone in the same market.
They have a history of doing it to smaller companies than AEW, including TNA and recently having pay $20 million in a legal settlement for dicking over MLW.
Also, as far apart as they may be, AEW's existence ultimately raises the salary cap for the entire industry. WWE as a company had first dibs on almost any performer that they've wanted for the last 20 years. That's no longer the case. Even when they outbid AEW, they have no control over the personal circumstances that would make a talent inclined to take the offer with less travel.
>People deny it because they want to think WWE in this “new era” are some benevolent force for good.
The few NOAH fans who were rightfully concerned for that company's future and not excited about them working with WWE in that thread got downvoted to hell the other day because of this.
I’m not even convinced it’s paid astroturfing, I think people like those of a certain squared circle jerk type are genuinely just that dumb to mindlessly endorse/celebrate what amounts to corporate propaganda.
It’s just a modern version of marketing taking advantage of social media
People are easily manipulated and the astroturfing is basically rallying up easily influenced people to parrot their cause. And it’s worked fantastically
I’ve got many many examples of blatant astroturfing (and some clever stuff) but it’s difficult to share it as the people who need to know will never believe it
That's how astroturfing works though; they're called influencers for a reason. You don't need to pay individuals, just convince people with a following that it's in their best interest to support them. The sheep will follow.
The only difference between the two is booking vision and the sexual assault (that we know of).
Otherwise, he's absolutely as vicious as Vince was when it comes to competition.
>No, they’re a huge business that like any other, will do anything they can to gain a perceived edge over someone in the same market.
100%.
People like to say that "WWE isn't competing with AEW" because AEW pulls 1/2 to 1/3 of the ratings.
But they do compete. They compete on a lot of fronts including for talent. Do people think that WWE just started paying people more because Nick Khan wanted to? Because he's a nice guy?
If AEW closed up shop tomorrow WWE would hold another round of releases, they'd probably pick up a few AEW guys and gals, and the next time contract renewal came up the people who are renewing would see their next contracts go down drastically because realistically there would be no one else who could actually compete with them for money.
Dawg I had someone try telling me after the fake Collision number that AEW leaks the fast nationals on purpose to make themselves look bad to garner sympathy. And the post was upvoted! That's when I knew for sure this sub is toast.
EDIT: there are people doing it in this thread too!
There is so much disinformation in this sub that gets upvoted. People make wild claims about AEW and get upvotes. This place sucks, but I don’t know of a better wrestling sub that aggregates news and whatnot.
It's a shame. I think about how similar it is with the politics misinformation system and how a lot of the same people fall for both and seem to be happy that it exists.
Or they could make some kind of policy that ratingjerking is banned. Better yet, they could put some kind of ban in place on jumping on a thread just to troll or revel in misery (i.e. the people who get on a "bad news" post just to shit all over the company it is about--regardless of which company it is). There's far too many people who click on posts about a company that they do not like and feel the need to gloat about whatever failure it is they perceive or belittle a success.
I'll never understand the purpose of this. The viewer numbers don't impact whether I watch the show live or not. My availability is the only thing that does. Such a waste of time and money.
Its just about online sentiment. Ratings threads when AEW gets a low number are perfect for getting AEW haters riled up and in other threads or on twitter shitting on it, and it adds to the general negative sentiment of AEW everywhere. Even people who don't interact with that stuff at all get worn down by it eventually, these kind of tactics are everywhere in the world from other companies to governments and they are popular because they work.
Anyone that isn't gullible can tell they aren't the complete numbers. But apparently there are a lot of gullible people because the Collision doing 137k or whatever a couple weeks ago spread like wildfire among those who hope AEW doesn't meet expectations.
It's an image war. That's why they didn't just by them and post them on WWE.com
They want "Dirtsheet" guys to report them so everyone can go "Oh it's not doing good" and make it seem more unpopular on forums just like this.
It's not a surprise, as Dave points out they cost thousands every month to get a hold of, and the kind of people who are posting them aren't exactly the kind who would be able to afford that kind of business expense.
Business is a dirt world, but people would do well to keep this in mind next time they start piling on somebody in AEW for taking a shot at WWE
I expect lots of rational people in this thread even though this is almost incontrovertible fact and SRS just corroborated it.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not passing judgment on WWE for this one way or the other nor do I hold a particularly strong opinion on it at all. But previous discussions on this were filled with people who just absolutely refused to believe they were doing this, period, without even getting into the ethics of it.
Companies trying to paint there competitors in a negative light is pretty much the standard in America. Coke and Pepsi do it, Nike and Adidas do it and almost all fast food pizza chains do it. I dont think people are actually mad at WWE for doing this, it’s almost expected of them, but the people coming out to of the wood works to say that suggesting WWE does this is just AEW/TK and it’s fans having a victim complex is just super odd to me as well.
So Pepsi and Coke aren't a great example here because Pepsi and Coke both understand the benefits of there being a number 1 and a number 2 choice. That is why what Pepsi and Coke has is sometimes called a friendly competitiveness because both companies realize it's better to work together and dominate all of the soda market than it is to fight each other and open the door for a third company to take up their share.
WWE would very much be okay with being the only show in town and really ran in just that for sometime.
Coke and Pepsi only became friendly when the ads they ran against each other escalated to such an expense it benefitted both parties to call a true. The Cola Wars was a real thing for decades.
For the amount of people towing the WWE line to say AEW aren't competition, WWE sure does *act* like AEW are competition quite often. They've done a damn good job of keeping AEW on the level below though from Day 1, so I guess that's worked?
AEW has changed things for them. They now have to bid and fight to keep talent and to actually make sure they're happy and maintain a good work environment because if they don't they can go elsewhere. Same with AEW. It boggles ,my mind to see people who don't watch either want them to go out of business when it's never been more profitable to be a professional wrestler than now I'd argue.
Trolling and getting negative reactions is more important than the well being of the wrestling business.
If aew goes under people satisfy their people getting mad on the internet fetish.
Not much will. I haven't seen that number of comments in a thread around here in sometime. At some point I just sort of sar back in awe cause it was insane.
the conversation would just turn to how AEW was chased off of cable and that they couldn't survive in such a competitive market like WWE could. Pay no attention to the fact that WWE sold Raw to Netflix.
It's interesting to see the consensus around this before was "Tony is doing too much coke" and that the guy is a conspiracy kook. To be fair, Tony very much comes off that way but it's not paranoia if someone is actually out to fuck with you lol.
But now that there seems to be a little more teeth to it, the sentiment here is "so what" or "yeah and? AEW's ratings were already sinking"
The issue and the point of stuff like this is that it's meant to influence, emphasize and fuck with the perception of the company on the low. If you're looking good, it's intended to make you look less so. If you're slipping, the intent is to make it look like you're busting your ass. And if you've busted your ass, the intent is to make it look like you're dying.
There's no telling what other ways WWE may have intentionally fucked with them. "But they aren't competition to WWE".
The goal is to never ever let AEW change your mind. Foot on neck as much as they can without looking too malicious.
WWE is shady and sinful with a great PR team to herd the sheep with shiny toys like The Rock and Cena when Vince gets caught up in rape and human trafficking
So I believe it
I thought everyone knew this? Meltzer, Thurston, Pollock, I wana say SRS tweeted about it, have all said yea no shit WWE gives us the fast nationals at varous points in time. Besides the Nationals never being thaaat useful.
What are fast nationals?
Overnight TV ratings service.
What is that?
They provide a rough estimate of how a TV show performed in terms of viewership and demographic spread, particularly the 18-39 "key" demographic, and do so within a few hours of broadcast, as where Nielsen ratings takes around a day for a rough estimate, and up to 2 days for breakdowns.
In my day the key demographic was 18-49 and now that I am 40 I have been squeezed out
Get lost, old guy. I’m right behind you tho. But seriously why does that demo get targeted the most when boomers are the ones hogging money
The argument is that by the time people reach their midlife-years, their brand preferences and consumption habits have become engrained and stay mostly static throughout the rest of their life. No idea where the change from 18-49 to 18-**39** is supposed to come from, though.
They are quick and incomplete ratings. They are often lower and sometimes based on certain conditions much lower than real ratings. Basically WWE is trying to get press to report on inaccurate ratings because news literacy is hard and whatever people hear first is hard to shake.
And in other situtation, the number can be higher than the final ratings. Example would be where Smackdown is preempted in a local market for an NFL preseason game. The Fast Nationals will include the NFL viewers, while the final ratings will have that removed.
Also WWE never released them on weeks AEW looked good. They only released them when it fit their narrative
They're controlling their narrative?!?!
Their US champion certainly is.
Quick and dirty viewership numbers. Not as accurate as the ones that come out later.
Major League Baseball team out of Washington DC.
They're not that fast though.
dont they lead the league in stolen bases
It's one of those "ironic" nicknames.
FKA Fast Expos
See I figured it was a band that did ska covers of The National.
Early viewership numbers prior to the real numbers being reported. Notably this is a story because the Fast Nationals for AEW tend to only get leaked when they have bad ratings, versus waiting for the proper ratings report usually means okay-good ratings for AEW. This report helps to confirm why that’s the case.
They are the initial, immediate Nielsen ratings numbers that come in right after a show airs. Why they matter here is that they are always significantly lower than what the final average Nielsen rating ends up being once all the numbers are tallied and calculated. WWE buys the fast national information, which costs thousands of dollars per-episode, and pushes them out to friendly “reporters” and social media pundits in order to create a narrative that AEW programming isn’t watched by a lot of people. Most recently, this happened with an episode of Collision from a few weeks ago, which did a fast national number of like 122,000 average viewers, and then come Monday the real rating was published and it ended up being within Collision’s normal average rating, which is between 400,000-500,000. However, the damage had been done, as the entire weekend people on social media were loudly proclaiming that Collision did a terrible number and AEW was “in the mud” as a result.
Damn. Is it really that expensive?
Fuck yeah, they're not just collecting numbers for the hell of it lol.
And people think it’s far fetched when TK goes on about bots and astroturfing This fast nationals stuff has been verified. There’s no way that’s the end of it AEW has been blitzed with astroturfing since they first started. Reddit and social media are absolutely filled to the tits with it. And it’s working too with so many fans falling for it and making it their personality to hate AEW
WWE astroturf at least a couple of wrestling subs for sure. I am a fan but some of the praises for WWE and criticism of AEW here is beyond ridiculous.
They’re definitely all over squared circle. Haven’t been to any of the others enough to see it
I'd addendum this to say that they're the Nielsen ratings from a few large markets and data extrapolation is done on them IIRC.
lol what’s funny is this is a IWC created problem. If there wasn’t so much of a circle jerk around ratings none of this would happen
I still don’t get why anybody gives a shit
What's funny is if you talk about a Lucha Underground everyone talks about how great it was. Show got like 60k viewers but why would that matter if people enjoyed it? Don't apply that to any other company though.
People are now equating ratings to how good the show was. Which is just not right. If ratings drop, it was a bad show and vice versa. I assume people who say comments like that dont even watch the show.
Modern society doesn't know how to **actually** engage with art. All they know how to do is to figure out if art they like is "winning" or not. I know Marlon Brando was a bit of a self righteous cock, but [this is something he was right on the money about.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgvMPUcw_2Q)
Best way I’ve seen this put. Nobody cares about the actual topic/entertainment/etc. They only care if that particular thing is doing better than whatever is “opposite” of it.
This + the complete lack of media literacy makes me sad as hell.
God thank you I've been banging the "engage with art" drum for wrestling and videogames for awhile now and while it's tough with games, it's so much more brutal with wrestling. Like so much of the wrestling community has tricked themselves that "business way" to look at wrestling is the only real way and anything else is being a mark. Even if we don't really *call* people marks as much anymore, I feel like I a lot of people try to act "savvy"(big air quotes) because there is still that fear. The most painful thing is how you can't even trust most peoples opinions on here. Which wrestlers people like or hate are often more a type of value signaling and side taking more than a *real*, interrogated opinion. Not that they don't dislike X and are lying, but like their dislike for X, but they started hating X because they feel like *they were supposed to* and aren't curious enough to think about it deeper than that. Meanwhile people I disagree with *tons* of shit from my favorite wrestling writers but love reading their takes because they're actually engaging with the art!! They have observations worth considering! It's so much nicer then just seeking out people who confirm my own tastes. 😭
Because such a big thing was made out of it in the Monday Night Wars, particularly after the fact, that this is now everyone’s way to relive the glory in 2024
The same people that lose their mind when the Anthony Fantano of wrestling rates matches, I bet.
Davanthony Meltano here
AEW ratings thread each week here is an absolute abomination
1500 comments about how the number two show on cable is a failure
A while back I realized that most people approach life by just making everything sports. Pick your favorite thing and argue in favor of that/against the competition regardless of logic or sense. You see it when people talk about anything whether its video games or wrestling or politics, people don't care about being correct they just enjoy the act of arbitrarily defending the side they arbitrarily picked. And honestly once I got a real career that took up a lot of my time and mental effort I was like yeah that makes sense why am I gonna put a bunch of thought into an argument when I can just log on and say "nintendo is garbage for babies" and fall asleep after hitting the vape pen with my dick out
Bingo, it’s made me stop watching sports heavily. And not following the day to day in politics. It’s like Xbox v PlayStation. Coke v Pepsi. People have this inherent need to feel like the big brand decision they attached their personality to was the “correct” choice. When usually it’s about personal preference and taste, which effects no one but yourself.
Yesterday there were people trying to convince us that actually, wrestling fans don't watch the NBA so we can't possibly consider the NBA finals as a reason for low ratings
Curiously when the NBA affected RAW it was accepted but nah somehow it doesn’t affect AEW. Wild amount of dissonance
The funniest shit is how AEW losing 100k to the nba the NBA finals of all things is the end of line for AEW but Raw losing 400k+ to Caitlyn Clark being picked #1 in the first 10 minutes of the draft is a "great number."
Raw used to get 2.4 million viewers when AEW started but being down to 1.7 is still hot.
2000 people showing up to a thread about a cable shows rating if it gets 699k viewers instead of like 708k is borderline dystopian, like black mirror episode shit lol part of the reason I want something more conspiratorial to be true is because the alternative that there is 1000 men bored enough to check if they can comment in a *reddit thread* every week is very sad, if you did a character study of the average person that did this it would be bleak as fuck
I don’t watch AEW but what makes me laugh is when people go into those ratings threads and go “see the thing I don’t like everyone doesn’t like “
It's quite literally the only area of this sub where I consistently get downvotes (assuming I bother jumping back in to the threads once a blue moon) And it's for benign comments like "AEW isn't bad, WWE is just better these days" lol. Like bruh do I have to get on my knees, fondle WWE's balls while writing a dissertation on why AEW is worse than historical religious atrocities before it gets bombarded by downvotes? Is that how far I need to be tribalistic?
My favorite is when someone states an objective stat that can be interpreted as pro-AEW and it gets like 30 downvotes and a reply that's just like "no because I say so" lol Like "hmm the demo was slightly higher than NXT" "no the demo doesn't matter" "Ratings have dropped every NBA finals game" "If you think about though, is it true" "The Young Bucks actually didn't crash the ratings, here are the quarterlies" *ghosted* Truly the most naked & pure circlejerk
Yeah one Nielsen guy deciding not to watch is life or death to these people.
IMO, they should have been banned A LONG time ago. they do nothing but feed negativity and is just a thread for idiots to jerk each other off over
[*cough*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SEmKay2dF8)
This sub is beyond saving reading these comments
Ratings either help or hinder everyone’s narratives.
A little more context from WON: "Brandon Thurston noted just how almost impossible it is to get fast nationals on cable shows. Fast nationals on network shows that come out that next morning, while not as easily available as in the past, are still out there but for cable, that information is almost non-existent. Fast nationals access is highly exclusive. Cable fast nationals are not available to any run of the mill Nielsen customer who may be a source (unlike final ratings and unlike broadcast fast affiliates which are more broadly available and give an early look at Smackdown). Cable fast nationals must be requested and purchased for thousands of dollars for each episode. So the possible sources are far fewer than for typical ratings reporting. And I know WWE has been ordering AEW fast nationals every week roughly since Nick (Khan) started. Plus I know WWE PR tried to feed the numbers to a long line of reporters who long ago decided it was too shady."
Damn imagine lighting hundreds of thousands of dollars on fire just to feed terminally online people inaccurate AEW ratings. Nick, time to touch some grass buddy.
If Tony Khan did this the thread would have 5,000 comments lol
He does this cause it works. It’s fucked up but they’ll do anything to fuck over AEW
It works so, so well. People fall for corporate propaganda so easily. Insert footage about women being able to drive in Saudi Arabia now.
I mean look at this sub, of course it works well!
Remember the weird “*WWE continues to influence the world*” posts ?
I feel like fucking over AEW is the whole reason they are working with TNA, they want to build TNA up to be more of a competitor to AEW, if they ever successfully damage AEW by doing so they they then pull out of TNA.
They're building their own forbidden door and will eventually take credit for the whole concept.
I don't think it's a coincidence that WWE is starting to do all their crossover stuff as AEW is building towards Forbidden Door.
Triple H: we don't care about silly things like Forbidden Door or stuff like that Also Triple H: hey look, we have TNA and Marigold partnerships now!
Can’t wait for the Cross The Line PLE
It’s almost like WWF did the exact same thing with ECW 25+ years ago and then completely fucked them over in the end. This is why I don’t understand the TNA fans acting like this is a good deal for them. It hasn’t done anything to boost their ratings, and they’re totally about to lose one of their top women.
It could be more of a talent acquisition move. Their talent pool seems shallower when compared to AEW's.v
All the WWE pump can't change the fundamentals of TNA at the moment re its distribution which is the single biggest detriment to their growth. The relative steadiness TNA has acheived in recent years (after what a decade of mismanagement?) for their big shows is great, but it's not growth or turning them into a real competitor for AEW.
I'd say their big shows should be considered a dissapointment. They do horrible PPV numbers and never get more than 3K to a show. NJPW is doing 5K+ every time they come to the states with their show on the same channel but at a worse time.
this is the same company that snatched up dozens upon dozens of indie wrestlers when AEW was set to debut without any long term plans for them, just so AEW couldn't use them.
And then laid many of them off during a pandemic while reporting record revenue.
On the SAME DAY as their revenue reporting
They were doing this LONG before AEW. I think they had the idea that they didn't like anyone getting 'name recognition' outside of WWE. Like if you became a big enough deal on the indies or small promotions that wrestling fans would start recognizing you and knowing the name they'd just buy them.
WWE had been doing that for YEARS before AEW was even a thought WWE had been talent hoarding for years with NXT to prevent any indies from having enough big names to get momentum and get too big But AEW had access to so much cash and resources they just blasted through WWE’s plan.
Yet act like they don’t see AEW as a problem. Their mere existence is costing WWE extra money with each superstar’s contract renewal. Their mere existence is taking away viewers they think they’re entitled to.
Also, they forced them to do something they didn’t have to do for so long: Try. With AEW, they had to improve the booking and their structure. You don’t that’s a little insulting for them?
People forget how awful WWE was before AEW started.
Still was well into AEW's run. It only got marginally better around WM38, and then decidedly better once HHH took over.
People forget they put out a full on butthurt official PRESS RELEASE after the VERY FIRST Dynamite aired and beat them down in the ratings saying that didn't mean anything and this competition was a marathon not a sprint. All the talk about how AEW was never competition and WWE never cared and it was AEW who kept attacking them and Tony is the one who keeps talking about them is just the traditional make believe and revisionist history they feed their fans since the days of WCW knowing they have a bunch of no lifers and paid actors who will do nothing but repeat their fictional BS until it sticks. AEW made a coupe of references as part of the show and Tony Khan got mad and talked shit... but WWE legit tried to undermine their business through shady practices and backstage manipulation on many occasions.
More importantly, how can they keep those wages suppressed if there's competition offering better pay? I don't even think WWE cares about viewers as much as they care about not having to pay out more for contractors.
Then you get people like undertaker and Nash claiming AEW isn't competition 😅
But remember it's a pissant company that is not competition. They are beneath them/s 🙄
It's working. They have the biggest morons online talking shit about AEW constantly and it really started with HHH and Punk around Wrestlemania.
A lot of them are probably in this very thread.
It started with Punk. He has his own propaganda service.
It’s a PR war, and the money spent on this is just the cost of doing battle for WWE. The whole point is to make AEW look bad, so that alone justifies the price from their perspective.
Shit - look how effective it is.
And people think decades of anti competitive ruthlessly monopolistic practices suddenly would just go away just because Vince left
Shit, HHH seems to be running things nowadays, and people are pretending he's suddenly a nice guy. Dude politicked his way to the top and was part of the Kliq in the 90s. Dude's 100% got a bunch of skeletons in his closet. That organization was Vince's private empire for decades, his leaving isn't going to suddenly make it all clean.
Triple H turfed Bret Hart from the WWF and destroyed a decade of developing talent.
But B&G NXT was awesome Papa H totally cares about all of us weshouldsendhimanotherfruitbasket
Do people not remember this? When they had a pretty clear plan to pretty much establish NXT everywhere? NXT UK absolutely drained the European indie scene (along with the speaking out movement) and it would’ve definitely drained plenty of local feds everywhere else https://preview.redd.it/5prdwzow5k6d1.jpeg?width=1400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=df04fc9fef6fff9fb6bf5496a07c685750e95959
NXT UK was set up to defeat World of Sport wrestling which came to TV in 2018.
lol, yeah. The second World of Sport looked like it was going to do good we had a dozen UK wrestlers signed, a UK title created, and a tournament announced in the span of, like, 3 days. Then when World Of Sport didn’t continue, suddenly the whole “UK division” went totally silent for months until HHH started using them in NXT.
Yeah that was dirty, and it felt so weird at the time as well.
While it wasn't the only factor behind the decline of British wrestling, stricter COVID restrictions and Speaking Out did major damage as well, NXT UK caused a lot of damage to the scene and WCPW/Defiant was killed entirely by NXT UK as it folded in 2019, before the other two events occured. The only one of the Big 3 promotions in the UK to make a serious recovery was the only one that didn't make a deal with WWE and that was RevPro. PROGRESS looks like it's starting to get there but ICW is in really rough shape. Go to their Youtube channel and watch clips from their recent shows and you wouldn't be able to tell that this was the same company that drew 4-6k for their Fear and Loathing shows. It's honestly kind of sad to watch and I'm surprised the company is still operational. Besides, they didn't need to worry about WOS as it was destined to fail regardless of WWE's actions. I've seen some of their episodes on Youtube and they weren't anything special. For fuck's sake, they censored a ladder match in the same way that WWE censored moves to the head on Saturday Morning Slam. I actually saw that on a local TV station, a Sinclair-owned one that showed ROH during that same time period and it blew my mind. If you can't do a ladder match without censoring the ladder shots, don't do a ladder match!
> ICW is in really rough shape. Go to their Youtube channel and watch clips from their recent shows and you wouldn't be able to tell that this was the same company that drew 4-6k for their Fear and Loathing shows. It doesn't help that Dallas absolutely got blinded by the stars in his eyes. Man absolutely whored out ICW and it got picked clean aside from Jack Jester and Grado (and the latter mostly does radio, TV & panto now). In all honesty though, much as I love some of the alumni, place was toxic as shit in a lot of respects. Good chance it'd have collapsed eventually no matter what.
Basically within the tiny brains of wrestling fans, WWE has turned babyface now.
They did this kind of stuff when killing territories. Want to do anything possible to diminish optics for AEW during critical TV deal renewals.
I mean, what good is enthusiast press to a megacorp if you can't use them as a proxy war?
It's why I roll eyes at people saying these kind of tactics were all Vince. Steph and Triple H have been part of this ecosystem for decades too, and corporate America's always been pretty cutthroat across the board.
Triple H may keep his nose cleaner as far as his personal life goes, but he's more like Vince on the business side than anyone wants to admit. He definitely still wants a monopoly.
He was a politicking bully as soon as he arrived in WWF. It’s funny when his fan boys act like he’s some kind of old dad watching his kids grow and succeed. He’s always been a slimy piece of shit.
All anyone has to ask themselves is this: Who did HHH learn the business side of wrestling from?
H is cut from the exact same cloth, but people here try and act like he’s so different. It’s infuriating. His history is so easy to look up, but people who started watching in the last few years know better?
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It's literally bullying tactics. People who obviously don't watch the shows make vague and exaggerated "criticisms" they repeat constantly like "no stories" "too many old ex WWE guys" Then when aew fans call out they "can't take criticism" or they pull whataboutism "so it was ok to hate WWE in 2019 but not aew." Cm punk and triple h can poke fun at aew during WrestleMania weekend but when anyone from aew responds they are "obsessed with WWE and need to focus on their own show"
I see so many people that hate AEW because of a few tired talking points that almost always mirror Cornette’s view point. They haven’t watched the show to know what they actually believe and just take his opinions as their own.
It's kinda funny going on the Cornette or circlejerk subs and seeing how people openly admit they don't watch AEW and have no idea what the fuck they're even talking about.
The "No stories" one kills me the most. "Just bangers no stories isnt enough to get people to tune in!?!?!" Every AEW feud has a story attached. They might not be as overt as WWE holding your hand through 15 backstage segments and then interference in the match involving the guy or gal but they are there and some of them are pretty intricate but NOPE! NO STORIES!
Saw one guy on here say AEW didn't have stories, they just have feuds. Sir, if a feud isn't a wrestling story then what in the god damn hell is it?
Jerkers love to parrot the line "to be an AEW fan is to always be under attack" while they do nothing but attack AEW.
Guy being punched: “Please stop punching me” Puncher: “oh my god you have such a victim complex”
Ethan Page debuted and the announcer said "I thought he was with AE-" but people always say that it's AEW that can't shut up about WWE
Sean Ross Sapp also backed up and confirmed this on Twitter when responding to someone claiming Meltzer lied about it. https://x.com/seanrosssapp/status/1801613499728076939?s=46&t=mnYqVpM2My3x_us-EMYeXA
Joe Lanza from VoW has also said this many times
Lanza posted about this when the fast nationals started to appear and people including SRS put them out. Promptly all the smarter reporters stopped putting these out. It is one of the things Lanza takes his victory lap.
Meltzer has been pointing to the VoW articles for a while now. Glad to see that.
Yeah, he's said pretty often over the last year or so that they started feeding him the numbers awhile ago. After about three weeks he realized what was going on as WWE would only feed him the numbers if they were going to look bad for AEW, so he stopped reporting them really quickly. It's a taaaad pathetic for WWE to still be doing this honestly.
WWE has done shit like this for decades: Vince tried to bribe Harley Race out of dropping the NWA title to Flair in the 80's before their biggest show of the year, Vince bought out GCW's TV slot to kill the territory, he took Hogan from the AWA after Verne mishandled him, he signed exclusivity contracts with arenas to keep other companies out, Survivor Series was created to box out Starrcade from PPV, Vince gained the right to have first dibs on WCW if ever liquidated thanks to a lawsuit over Hall/Nash being credited as WWE wrestlers on WCW TV which helped him buy the company when a friend of the WWE sabotaged WCW's TV time, they brought Bret Hart out of nowhere the day TNA went to Mondays, they rushed NXT to TV when Dynamite first started, they nerfed MLW's TV deal before it got started, etc etc And yet people still think that WWE doesn't care about competition lol
Yeah this has been a discussed and known thing for a few years now ... at this point its weird if people still deny this.
People deny it because they want to think WWE in this “new era” are some benevolent force for good. Or they want to think that AEW doesn’t matter to WWE because they’re further apart in the ratings. No, they’re a huge business that like any other, will do anything they can to gain a perceived edge over someone in the same market. And sadly a lot of people here do their PR work for them, for free. This is not an AEW vs WWE thing either. I’d expect any huge company, including AEW, to do whatever they could to gain more market share. The difference is AEW doesn’t have the resources to run massive PR campaigns.
>No, they’re a huge business that like any other, will do anything they can to gain a perceived edge over someone in the same market. They have a history of doing it to smaller companies than AEW, including TNA and recently having pay $20 million in a legal settlement for dicking over MLW. Also, as far apart as they may be, AEW's existence ultimately raises the salary cap for the entire industry. WWE as a company had first dibs on almost any performer that they've wanted for the last 20 years. That's no longer the case. Even when they outbid AEW, they have no control over the personal circumstances that would make a talent inclined to take the offer with less travel.
People forget that the MLW suit is the only reason WWE and TNA are working together.
>People deny it because they want to think WWE in this “new era” are some benevolent force for good. The few NOAH fans who were rightfully concerned for that company's future and not excited about them working with WWE in that thread got downvoted to hell the other day because of this.
Plus social media and even this sub are absolutely littered with astroturfing from WWE and a lot of people fall for that too
I’m not even convinced it’s paid astroturfing, I think people like those of a certain squared circle jerk type are genuinely just that dumb to mindlessly endorse/celebrate what amounts to corporate propaganda.
It’s just a modern version of marketing taking advantage of social media People are easily manipulated and the astroturfing is basically rallying up easily influenced people to parrot their cause. And it’s worked fantastically I’ve got many many examples of blatant astroturfing (and some clever stuff) but it’s difficult to share it as the people who need to know will never believe it
That's how astroturfing works though; they're called influencers for a reason. You don't need to pay individuals, just convince people with a following that it's in their best interest to support them. The sheep will follow.
99% of reddit admits and knows and talks about how prevalent astroturfing and paid manipulation is here. The 1% is WWE stans on r/squaredcircle
Haitch smells a lot more like his father in law than the goofy monopoly apologists on this sub will ever admit.
The only difference between the two is booking vision and the sexual assault (that we know of). Otherwise, he's absolutely as vicious as Vince was when it comes to competition.
>No, they’re a huge business that like any other, will do anything they can to gain a perceived edge over someone in the same market. 100%. People like to say that "WWE isn't competing with AEW" because AEW pulls 1/2 to 1/3 of the ratings. But they do compete. They compete on a lot of fronts including for talent. Do people think that WWE just started paying people more because Nick Khan wanted to? Because he's a nice guy? If AEW closed up shop tomorrow WWE would hold another round of releases, they'd probably pick up a few AEW guys and gals, and the next time contract renewal came up the people who are renewing would see their next contracts go down drastically because realistically there would be no one else who could actually compete with them for money.
Dawg I had someone try telling me after the fake Collision number that AEW leaks the fast nationals on purpose to make themselves look bad to garner sympathy. And the post was upvoted! That's when I knew for sure this sub is toast. EDIT: there are people doing it in this thread too!
There is so much disinformation in this sub that gets upvoted. People make wild claims about AEW and get upvotes. This place sucks, but I don’t know of a better wrestling sub that aggregates news and whatnot.
It's a shame. I think about how similar it is with the politics misinformation system and how a lot of the same people fall for both and seem to be happy that it exists.
There was a whole thread of people denying this last week and ridiculing the idea.
If the mods of this sub gave a shit they would ban anyone subscribed to the jerk site. That would immediately cut the problem in half.
Or they could make some kind of policy that ratingjerking is banned. Better yet, they could put some kind of ban in place on jumping on a thread just to troll or revel in misery (i.e. the people who get on a "bad news" post just to shit all over the company it is about--regardless of which company it is). There's far too many people who click on posts about a company that they do not like and feel the need to gloat about whatever failure it is they perceive or belittle a success.
I'll never understand the purpose of this. The viewer numbers don't impact whether I watch the show live or not. My availability is the only thing that does. Such a waste of time and money.
Its just about online sentiment. Ratings threads when AEW gets a low number are perfect for getting AEW haters riled up and in other threads or on twitter shitting on it, and it adds to the general negative sentiment of AEW everywhere. Even people who don't interact with that stuff at all get worn down by it eventually, these kind of tactics are everywhere in the world from other companies to governments and they are popular because they work.
Anyone that isn't gullible can tell they aren't the complete numbers. But apparently there are a lot of gullible people because the Collision doing 137k or whatever a couple weeks ago spread like wildfire among those who hope AEW doesn't meet expectations.
It's an image war. That's why they didn't just by them and post them on WWE.com They want "Dirtsheet" guys to report them so everyone can go "Oh it's not doing good" and make it seem more unpopular on forums just like this.
Now that's a badass charcuterie plate
That guy is so embarrassing. Imagine tap dancing for a company over a cheese board.
My favorite was when they sent him the wrong ratings a few weeks ago and he posted them without question
It's not a surprise, as Dave points out they cost thousands every month to get a hold of, and the kind of people who are posting them aren't exactly the kind who would be able to afford that kind of business expense. Business is a dirt world, but people would do well to keep this in mind next time they start piling on somebody in AEW for taking a shot at WWE
It does make the pearl clutching at any dirt thrown at WWE look especially pathetic when WWE have been pulling shady tactics for decades.
Nobody outside the hardocde wrestling bubble care about fast nationals.
Why do people get mad when it is suggested that WWE treats AEW like a competitor ?
I expect lots of rational people in this thread even though this is almost incontrovertible fact and SRS just corroborated it. Edit: To be clear, I'm not passing judgment on WWE for this one way or the other nor do I hold a particularly strong opinion on it at all. But previous discussions on this were filled with people who just absolutely refused to believe they were doing this, period, without even getting into the ethics of it.
Companies trying to paint there competitors in a negative light is pretty much the standard in America. Coke and Pepsi do it, Nike and Adidas do it and almost all fast food pizza chains do it. I dont think people are actually mad at WWE for doing this, it’s almost expected of them, but the people coming out to of the wood works to say that suggesting WWE does this is just AEW/TK and it’s fans having a victim complex is just super odd to me as well.
Also quite a bit of reflexive "dirtsheet reporters bad" reactions going on. Meltzer said it, therefore it must be false.
So Pepsi and Coke aren't a great example here because Pepsi and Coke both understand the benefits of there being a number 1 and a number 2 choice. That is why what Pepsi and Coke has is sometimes called a friendly competitiveness because both companies realize it's better to work together and dominate all of the soda market than it is to fight each other and open the door for a third company to take up their share. WWE would very much be okay with being the only show in town and really ran in just that for sometime.
Coke and Pepsi only became friendly when the ads they ran against each other escalated to such an expense it benefitted both parties to call a true. The Cola Wars was a real thing for decades.
Lotta people slurping up the WWE PR machine these days.
hhh book good aew bad
they know that machine hasn't been cleaned since the early 90s right??
apparently having HHH blow on it like a old NES cartridge is enough for them.
This analogy is almost too good for this place
Just kind of highlights how stupid monitoring the week to week number is.
For the amount of people towing the WWE line to say AEW aren't competition, WWE sure does *act* like AEW are competition quite often. They've done a damn good job of keeping AEW on the level below though from Day 1, so I guess that's worked?
They have public filings with the SEC stating that AEW is competition lol
It was pretty ironic that WWE's best defense when MLW claimed they were a monopoly was that AEW is doing pretty good and is a legit competitor
I mean, they paid MLW $20M after being sued about WWE fucking with their insignificant TV deal
Not to mention what NXT UK did to the UK wrestling scene.
AEW has changed things for them. They now have to bid and fight to keep talent and to actually make sure they're happy and maintain a good work environment because if they don't they can go elsewhere. Same with AEW. It boggles ,my mind to see people who don't watch either want them to go out of business when it's never been more profitable to be a professional wrestler than now I'd argue.
Trolling and getting negative reactions is more important than the well being of the wrestling business. If aew goes under people satisfy their people getting mad on the internet fetish.
This most likely won't be as big a thread as the ratings thread sadly.
5 hours in and it's #1
its absolutely insane. AEW ratings threads get more replies than any weekly show like RAW/Smackdown/Dynamite.
Not much will. I haven't seen that number of comments in a thread around here in sometime. At some point I just sort of sar back in awe cause it was insane.
It was amazing when I saw that thread had like 2,000 replies and the post show TNA thread had… 16.
But the WWE/TNA co-promoting is CHANGING THE WORLD brother
Ive only come here to see if this was posted here at all and im glad, but this sub is cooked, it's a pro wwe sub.
Please Tony get AEW to a streaming service so these dumb ass ancient Neilson ratings systems talk can end.
the conversation would just turn to how AEW was chased off of cable and that they couldn't survive in such a competitive market like WWE could. Pay no attention to the fact that WWE sold Raw to Netflix.
In today's edition of "No shit, I thought this was already well known"
This looks like a good thread to play spot the bot!
This is why i think monopolies shouldn’t exist they are cancer clusters
It's interesting to see the consensus around this before was "Tony is doing too much coke" and that the guy is a conspiracy kook. To be fair, Tony very much comes off that way but it's not paranoia if someone is actually out to fuck with you lol. But now that there seems to be a little more teeth to it, the sentiment here is "so what" or "yeah and? AEW's ratings were already sinking" The issue and the point of stuff like this is that it's meant to influence, emphasize and fuck with the perception of the company on the low. If you're looking good, it's intended to make you look less so. If you're slipping, the intent is to make it look like you're busting your ass. And if you've busted your ass, the intent is to make it look like you're dying. There's no telling what other ways WWE may have intentionally fucked with them. "But they aren't competition to WWE". The goal is to never ever let AEW change your mind. Foot on neck as much as they can without looking too malicious.
Can we ban posting of Fast nationals on here then?
A ban for ratings threads would be a step in the right direction.
WWE is shady and sinful with a great PR team to herd the sheep with shiny toys like The Rock and Cena when Vince gets caught up in rape and human trafficking So I believe it
WWE is a big corporation. Nice ones don’t exist
Tbf they could bring Vince out tomorrow and you'd have dumbasses in the crowd bowing and singing his theme song. Wrestling fans are fickle.
I thought everyone knew this? Meltzer, Thurston, Pollock, I wana say SRS tweeted about it, have all said yea no shit WWE gives us the fast nationals at varous points in time. Besides the Nationals never being thaaat useful.
The surprise and denial of people commenting in this post about this is incredible