AEW had a very happy 2020 New Year’s celebration by beating the pants off of WWE in the ratings department during the latest battle of the Wednesday Night Wars.
Now to be fair, WWE elected to skip a live show for NXT this week, instead running a year-end special that recapped the best matches of the year and announced the year-end award winners and the bracket for the 2020 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic.
While last week AEW took the night off completely for the Christmas holiday, forfeiting the ratings entirely to WWE Christmas.
So how did the two shows measure up this week?
NXT was clearly out to maintain, not compete, and that showed in the numbers. Wednesday’s Homecoming Edition of Dynamite drew nearly a million viewers with a whopping 967,000 people tuning in, while NXT’s year-end special dropped down to 548,000 viewers, down almost 300K from the week prior. (source Showbuzz Daily)
AEW ranked #13 in the Cable Top 150, while NXT ranked #66. AEW ranked #40 in viewership, while NXT ranked #48 in viewership. AEW drew a .36 in the 18-49 key demographic, which is up from the .25 they scored two weeks ago. NXT drew a 0.15 in the 18-49 demo, down from the .022 the show brought in last week.
The Wednesday Night Wars began on Oct. 2, here’s how the two companies did for 2019:
-NXT drew a total of 10.209 million viewers over 13 episodes, for an average of 785,307 viewers per episode.
-Dynamite drew a total of 10.840 million viewers over 12 episodes, for an average of 903,333 viewers per episode.
The Wednesday Night Wars resume in earnest next week on Jan. 8.
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