[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

The 37th WrestleMania takes place on 4/10 and 4/11 with WWE’s first ticketed event with a decent-sized live audience since the start of the pandemic. Both nights are scheduled for a one-hour pre-show at 7 p.m., followed by the main show from 8-11 p.m., although it can go longer, but the target planned finish is listed at 11 p.m. Both nights are listed as having seven matches. No pre-show matches have been announced, and pretty much every main wrestler on the roster with the exception of Charlotte Flair, Bayley, Carmella and Billie Kay is already accounted for either on the two shows of the “WrestleMania Friday Night Smackdown” show that was taped on 4/2 and airs on 4/9. It wouldn’t be a surprise to add guys from the Battle Royal or some of the talent from Friday to do one pre-show match, but nothing has been listed as of yet. The show is basically sold out of whatever number of tickets were put on sale. There were, two days ahead, 612 tickets left for Saturday and 333 tickets left for Sunday. The secondary market get-in price is $36 for Saturday and $38 for Sunday, so it is not a hot ticket at this point.

Regarding the non-WWE events, and this isn’t unexpected, but this is the worst year since piggybacking off WrestleMania got started when it comes to ticket sales. As of the start of the week, only two shows, three if you count the AEW show in Jacksonville which is a completely different market, have any appreciable tickets sold. Aside from the 4/8 Bloodsport show (which drew 500) and the 4/9 Spring Break show, no other show had even sold out row two, and many had not sold out row one. Promoter Brett Lauderdale had hoped for 1,000 for Spring Break, which in this day and age would be a success, but said that based on advance sales that last year’s show in the same location would have sold 4,000 tickets. The number of travelers is obviously way down.

The end of the Wednesday night wars, before the new beginnings for NXT and AEW as unopposed shows, told an interesting story. With a live Takeover show, NXT was expected to win in overall viewers and possibly, for only the second time, win in the charts and by the TV world standings, which is 18-49. But clearly, whatever battle ended when NBCU made the decision to move NXT to Tuesday for reasons likely having to do with the NHL getting Wednesday if and when NBCU and the NHL make that deal being worked on. There was clearly no major concern about winning a TV war this week, since WWE made the decision with USA to air the show live on Peacock with no commercials. The combination of a show like that with no commercials, meaning no AEW boost during the breaks but cutting their own throat for TV numbers, changed whatever the final result would have been. The biggest lesson of the night is now who won, which wasn’t clear cut in the end, but if people have the chance to watch a major show with matches build up for weeks, with no commercial interruptions streaming, or on television, how many will watch it via streaming. We don’t know the answer completely, but the answer was a lot less than most thought. NXT did 768,000 television viewers and a 0.22 (282,000 viewers) in 18-49. AEW did 688,000 viewers and an 0.28 (366,000 viewers) in 18-49. Head-to-head, NXT’s record on November 20, 2019, was 916,000 viewers when the product was far hotter and on a show loaded with main roster top stars. The most liberal estimate possible would be 148,000 viewers went to Peacock meaning your best estimate is that 16.2 percent of the audience watched the show streaming without commercials, a number far lower than I would have expected. And more likely, the number would be closer to 100,000 to 120,000 or 11.5 to 14.4 percent. The big question was in 18-49, which AEW only lost once, and there was significant thought that it could happen. It actually wasn’t close, although had they not put the show on Peacock, it would have been close. But if there is a surprise, and maybe it shouldn’t have been, even with a Takeover, it looks unlikely NXT could have won. AEW’s edge was 84,000 viewers. NXT this week did 36.7 percent of its viewers 18-49 to 53.2 percent for AEW. If we go with the liberal 148,000 estimate, that would bring 54,000 viewers. Even if we say the streamers are more likely 18-49, and you have to believe that’s true, particularly under 35, there’s still no way it’s going to be close to 50.0 percent for NXT because that’s not their audience. Adding 74,000 cuts the gap between the two shows close, to just a scant 10,000 viewers and an 0.28 to 0.27. More realistically 60,000 is even a very liberal estimate of gains and it would have been an 0.26. But if winning the night was a major concern this week for either WWE or USA, they wouldn’t have put it on Peacock commercial free. It also should be noted that if NXT did add 74,000 to its total, many of them would switch to AEW during commercial breaks. By normal standards, over the course of a two hour show, that only adds 4,000 viewers to the AEW average. Now, NXT would have won probably two of the eight quarters in 18-49, something it hasn’t done in a long time, and would have surely won the main event quarter ... The final standings ended up with AEW winning 73-1 in 18-49, the key number, when it comes to shows, doubling NXT 20 times. AEW won 62 shows with total viewers to 10 for NXT with two basic ties. When it comes to quarters, AEW had a 587-13 edge in 18-49 and 480-110-2 edge in overall viewers.

Found it interesting that the estimates for Peacock's viewership of NXT's TakeOver show on Night 1 was that low since I figured it would have eaten a bigger chunk of USA Network's viewership.

The announcement of Chris Jericho as a guest on Stone Cold Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions that airs directly after the second day of WrestleMania on 4/11 on Peacock was largely a big shock, having the best-known mainstream name in AEW on WWE’s most-watched streaming show aside from PPVs. And given the placement, right after most likely the Roman Reigns vs. Edge vs. Daniel Bryan Universal title match, in theory WWE’s biggest and likely most-watched streaming service match of the year, tells you that it will likely be the largest audience for anything but a PPV show this year. From a pure business standpoint on the WWE side, it makes sense. WWE is just starting out on Peacock. This will be its biggest week of the year on the station. And there is nobody, with the possible exception of Vince McMahon, who at this point could do the show and draw the audience Jericho would draw, partially because of curiosity because he is from the opposition ... Austin told Sports Illustrated that the time came up when Jericho contacted him about his recent interview with Undertaker, and then the two started talking, and Jericho brought up that he’d love to do the show. The obstacle would be Vince McMahon, or possibly Tony Khan. Austin liked the idea, checked with McMahon, who okayed it. Considering WWE’s history of never acknowledging opposition and certainly never doing anything like this before, it was surprising. They did use Ric Flair while under contract to TNA for a Hall of Fame ceremony and Billy Gunn, under contract to AEW but before they had run their first show for a Hall of Fame ceremony. During a promo Sami Zayn once mentioned AEW which was done to show and “shake people up” with the idea he must be shooting. Jericho noted that it’s great for AEW as one of its biggest stars will be on a heavily-watched show by wrestling fans just days before it gets Wednesday night to itself. Basically WWE the most viewers possible in the infancy of its relationship with Peacock. Peacock would likely be thrilled with the numbers. Peacock has already been heavily promoting its network in television advertising with WWE content as a focal point, and if WWE does big streaming numbers, that’s more publicity all over television that promotes the WWE brand as well. For AEW, it’s Jericho appearing on a show that a lot of wrestling fans will watch, many of whom may not be AEW fans, and Jericho is a good salesman ... Will McMahon and WWE, who have final editing rights, allow a discussion of AEW beating NXT in the ratings almost every week until NXT moved days, especially considering how current that story is? The moving of the days is far more related to the shutting down of NBC Sports Network and migrating the programming to the USA Network, meaning an expectation of NHL on Wednesday, but that doesn’t change the results of the head-to-head battles and that the move literally happened the week the show airs. One would think Austin and Jericho both know that “the house always wins,” to borrow the name of this week’s AEW house show, in the sense they both would have an idea of what would get McMahon mad and avoid it, because even if they don’t, it’s going to be edited out anyway ... Some are taking this as a public acknowledgment that McMahon is no longer concerned about AEW. McMahon put NXT head-to-head with AEW to beat it, and when that didn’t work, to at least keep its numbers down, since AEW revenue is directly tied to its ratings because it shares in advertising revenue. But after 18 months, he may see AEW is going to be at a certain level, well below WWE, even though it wasn’t that many months ago when one edition of AEW with competition on a Wednesday beat Raw, without direct wrestling competition, in 18-49 the following Monday, and had at other times beaten Raw in 18-34 and women 18-34. But things have changed since December. Raw was also hurt significantly by NFL competition the week it fell below the prior AEW show, which was boosted by a combination of the Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley title change and Sting’s return, which led to two big numbers, before AEW settled back to normal levels. Now, with Mania season, the gap is quite large. And even if AEW beat Raw numbers, WWE is still a tons larger company and that will never change any time in the long-term future. But, and this is a key, if AEW does competitive numbers, its value in its next negotiations would go way up. This was a company that for years would pretend that TNA didn’t exist, almost comically like when A.J. Styles came in and they wrote stories about him. AEW had been for the most part regarded the same way. One person close to the situation said McMahon’s decision was all about timing. “Quite simply.....It’s a great business move for him. Wrestling as you know is all about timing. And with the Peacock debut, this is timed perfectly. Six months either way and this probably doesn’t happen.”

The number of different people in matches that have appeared on Dynamite in the first quarter were 92, for a two hour a week show. The number on Raw and Smackdown COMBINED, with five hours a week, was 78. That number doesn’t include managers or guys in factions outside the ring. Last year during the same quarter for AEW, the number was 62, so they’ve thrown 48 percent more wrestlers getting exposure on Dynamite. That’s not necessarily good or bad, as they have far more talented guys than they had at this time last year, but it does make it harder to get over when you’re throwing so many people out there, and it’s already harder to get over without packed arenas.. The number of people outside the ring on average during an AEW match has risen 49 percent. That means more interference or brawls. It does get even more people television time, even more than the increase in guys in matches has shown, but it makes it harder for anyone but the most hardcore fan to focus on things. But so many angles means each angle means less. The amount of interference means the interference means less. There is nothing wrong with interference, unless you’re doing St. Louis of 90s All Japan, where it had better be limited based on the product you are producing. But too much is always bad. It’s the same with blood. Historically, blood has drawn. I’ve seen many groups go without it and do just fine. World Class never did blood in its heyday and drew the highest percentage of women fans. It wasn’t because of no blood, it was because of the guys and the way they were promoted, but the blood, which its rival, Southwest Championship Wrestling, used to excess, gave it a different feel. But SWCW went out of business with heavy juice. In the JCP vs. WWF battle in the 80s, JCP used blood a lot while WWF at times never used it, other times sparingly. The blood absolutely gave JCP another audience, but it also, because it was done to excess, burned out that audience on blood to where it lost its effectiveness. It’s not a matter of not doing certain things, it’s a matter of just keeping them from overriding the strength of the product. For fans where wrestling is an entertaining divergence from their life as opposed to their life, they want easily focused shows, angles that build to matches in a week, or a few weeks. If there is an angle that, unless it’s a PPV build or a small tease that you notice but isn’t an overt physical angle, that doesn’t lead to a match within probably three weeks, the angle is almost inherently useless and clutter. Because the reality is, so many angles are run that people largely are going to forget about something more than three weeks ago anyway. There are other issues, such as the championships both having the top talent seemingly not interested in them at all. Chris Jericho lost his title a year ago and has never gotten a rematch while you have had 52 shows, with probably 45 of them likely to have benefitted greatly if such a match got a three-week television build; Cody had a long TV title run and then said he wasn’t interested in a rematch, and with him not challenging for the tag title and the stip about the AEW title, basically it’s one of the top babyfaces blowing off all titles. And the reason he doesn’t challenge for the AEW title, because MJF screwed him, resulted in one PPV, where he got screwed and a year later he can’t challenge for the title. So they did a great angle and ended up with almost no payoff from such a hardcore shocking long-lasting stip past proving they adhere to their stips for a long time. But what the research showed is the television focus time on wrestlers from year-to-year, comparing the first three months of 2021 with that of 2020. The most notable thing is that the people you would have thought one year ago were those being groomed for future stardom are actually focused on less than a year ago. Kenny Omega’s television focus time, even though he’s world champion, was down 46 percent from the first quarter last year. And he’s the top star right now. But that’s because they are spending so much time focusing on others. Jon Moxley was down 42 percent, and he’s the top contender for the world title. But here’s the more important ones. Sammy Guevara was No. 3 in the first quarter of 2020 and he was No. 70 in the first quarter of 2021. Granted, part of that was an angle to take him off TV. But his long-term build angle was with MJF. They even did the turn without rushing, which is far superior to how most companies usually do things like that today. But here we are and he’s back from his hiatus, never said a word and there’s still no match with MJF and his return direction was attacking—Shawn Spears, a guy who had nothing to do with his leaving and gave him no problems week after week. Jungle Boy is featured 15 percent less than last year at this time, and it’s guys like Guevara, Jungle Boy, MJF, Wardlow, Page (down 29 percent), Darby Allin (whose numbers are almost the same as last year, only a four percent decline) are the people who all should be a level up from last year. And Allin and MJF are bigger stars than a year ago. In the case of Page, it’s not really a big deal because he’s a guy who is an accepted star and you can always pull the trigger on him and people will accept him as a top guy. He can get momentum whenever they choose to give it to him. Guevara, Jungle Boy and Wardlow are all guys everyone knows about their potential and most figure to be major stars. Guevara was focused on for a while and should have returned as a super hot babyface with a major push coming off his angle. Wardlow is in the same spot as a year ago. Jungle Boy was given two starting points, the Jericho match which had no follow-up and needed one (this was changed due to the pandemic and at that time it was the right call) and the Harwood match, which seemed to kick off a bigger feud that in fact never has gone anywhere past one six-man tag match where the focal point was Tully Blanchard and it’s been largely forgotten. On the flip side, as far as new talent goes, John Silver, Isaiah Kassidy and Tay Conti were all in the top 20 this year and were not close to that last year. The 20 guys who got the most time this year are getting 23 percent less time than the top 20 of last year. So there is less time for the focal point players. Another change is far more time devoted to women than last year. That’s a good thing because by and large the work of the women has improved as has the depth.

Will Ospreay became the first European wrestler to win the major world title in Japanese pro wrestling on 4/4 at Sumo Hall in Tokyo when he defeated IWGP world champion Kota Ibushi in what was his first shot at the title. Ospreay, 27, is the second youngest foreigner (Jay White was 26 when he won the same title in 2019 from Hiroshi Tanahashi) to ever win the company’s major world title, now called the IWGP world heavyweight title after the merging of the old IWGP title with the IC title. ... Ospreay was only the fourth U.K. wrestler ever to challenge for New Japan’s top prize after Billy Robinson (the first British wrestler to win a world title in Japan with the IWA promotion, and went to a 60:00 draw with Antonio Inoki for the NWF title in 1975), Steve (now William) Regal, who had a shot at Shinya Hashimoto, and Zack Sabre Jr., who had a shot at Kazuchika Okada ... He and Ibushi had the expected excellent match at the annual Sakura Genesis show. Ospreay won clean after the hidden blade and storm breaker in 30:13 before a sellout crowd of 4,844 fans ... The bad news is that due to growth in COVID numbers, the government has put new restrictions back on and all sports events are limited to 5,000 capacity. New Japan had hoped by running 5/15 at Yokohama Stadium and 5/29 at the Tokyo Dome that they could drew larger crowds and hope to make up some of the huge revenue drops that COVID has taken out of their live event and live merchandise business, which is really what their company is built around. Unless these regulations change, it looks like it’s going to be like the Jingu Stadium show last year with 5,000 fans in 35,000 plus seat stadiums.

WWE held its 2020 and 2021 Hall of Fame ceremonies that were taped on 3/30 and 3/31 and aired on Peacock on 4/6 with no fans, although with the week to edit, they piped in fake crowd noise and showed audience Thunderdome reaction shots that were actually from other events and also piped in. The inductees were given time limits, and no longer had inductors, to move the pace along. The events clocked in at a combined just over three hours. The inductees were announced ahead of time but they also added a number of “Legacy wing” inductees. There’s really no rhyme nor reason of who the names are, past to make sure those of color and women are inducted, leading to a situation where many of the greatest male and female stars in history aren’t listed, while people who had nowhere near their tenure or stardom are ... The 2021 show started with Rob Van Dam. He thanked the fans, as well as The Sheik, Sabu, joked about getting high and never mentioned Paul Heyman by name. He said his being inducted was a victory for all the fans ... This legacy class was Ethel Johnson, who was a black woman wrestler, billed on the show as the first in history. Because wrestling is so vast and its history isn’t kept up well compared to most things (although historical knowledge and info is umpteem times greater now than 20 yeas ago), there is no way of knowing if this is accurate. What we do know is that Johnson’s name would come up on the Internet as the answer to that question and that Johnson was the first woman in the Billy Wolfe stable which had national reach. But Wolfe was not the first woman wrestling promoter, although he was the first to have a stable of women that were booked nationally. Johnson, real name Ethel Wingo, was a woman wrestler from 1951 (at age 16) to 1976 who was never one of the top stars. That could have been partially because in many place due to bans on interracial wrestling (this really existed in the 50s and 60s in some places) she couldn’t have even had a chance in some places. She may have been the first African American woman wrestler performing in the U.S. She started in late 1951, a few weeks before her sister and training partner, Babs Wingo (Barbara Wingo), broke in and was touring with her at the age of 14. The two sisters became the “colored” as they were billed woman wrestlers who would mostly wrestle each other in some Southern states, where neither were allowed to wrestle against Caucasian women. In many other states, they both worked tag matches against the other women from the Billy Wolfe troupe. A third younger sister, Marva Wingo, wrestled as Marva Scott starting in 1954. Johnson’s niece went public a few days later when she found out saying that none of the family were contacted and had no knowledge of this (we don’t know how prevalent this is but Barbara Goodish had noted she had no idea about Bruiser Brody’s induction until she was told by wrestling fans after the fact and to this day Barbara Goodish has tons of connections and friends in and around wrestling). They also noted that the video footage used for the piece was not of Ethel Johnson, which we had noticed immediately. The footage shown on the show of her flying around the ring was actually Sandy Parker, a completely different woman wrestler, taken from Southern California since Gene LeBell was the referee. Parker, who was one of the biggest woman wrestling stars of the 70s, was actually a much bigger star than Johnson. Parker was one of the first American stars for the All Japan women’s promotion where she held their world title in 1973 and their tag team title on eight occasions.

Stardom held another PPV show on 4/4 from the Yokohama Budokan before 1,029 fans ... It was notable because the same parent company ran PPV shows that went head-to-head with each other (Stardom and New Japan), and one couple, Will Ospreay and Bea Priestley not only challenged for the respective world title on the same night, but they actually went into the ring at the same time. The results were different, as this was Priestley’s last match in Japan after making the decision not to sign a new contract. While it was known she was done with New Japan, her leaving Stardom was kept secret as to not give away the result of the title match. Right after she was pinned, she announced it was her last match with Stardom and she was moving from Japan. She didn’t tell anyone what her plans were, past moving back to the U.K. Usually when these things are kept secret it means WWE. The belief was that she was headed to the WWE U.K. brand as she said she was moving back to the U.K, and not to the U.S. WWE had been after her for years but she had turned down prior offers and instead decided to move to Japan where she became the top foreign star in the promotion. She had worked for AEW but was released because it became impossible to bring her to the U.S. It’s been confirmed of two things, one is that she’s not signing with AEW and the other is that her U.S. working visa has expired. Now WWE can get her one, but right now that takes a lot of time.

As it turns out, AAA’s social media did at one point mention the Laredo Kid title loss to Lio Rush that now is basically being declared as having never happened. There were a series of things that happened and didn’t happen. The plan was to announce a match in Mexico where the belt went back that never happened, but in the end, they just went with the idea to just put the belt on Laredo Kid without even that. The fact that they did announce the change to Rush on social media but not on television makes it more of a mess. The reality is that there are people and relationships that they want to protect, so AAA and MLW are both publicly protecting each other for the issue so for the public they’ve just decided to pretend it never happened. Lio Rush claimed on Twitter he didn’t have a scheduled conflict to come to Mexico and drop the belt and then deleted it. Court Bauer told Fightful that AAA put the match on its YouTube page

NEW JAPAN: Jon Moxley talked about defending his U.S. title next against Yuji Nagata. Since the quarantine is in effect in Japan, that would seem to indicate Nagata will come to the U.S. for a time, including doing a match with Moxley for the title and quarantine before returning home. It’s probably being taped around now because Nagata is off the next month of shows in Japan

Tokyo Metropolitan Police on 4/5 sent papers to a man in his late 30s, the second person to be charged with social media bullying in the death of Hana Kimura. On April 8, 2020, the man allegedly sent anonymous tweets to Kimura saying, “Die, you stupid brat’ and “You’re a waste” and more. When asked by investigators why, he said that he was just joining in on what he had seen on her site. The Metropolitan police in studying her site after her death said they found about 300 posts from 200 accounts that they considered defamatory. With the statue of limitations int these cases being one year, there is less than a two month window regarding decisions to charge people. The first man convicted was only fined the equivalent of $80

With the story going around about Azteca Underground trying to be released in what appears to be an MLW spinoff, Lucha Libre FMV, the parent company of Lucha Underground, applied for trademarks to Lucha Underground for a downloadable television series featuring wrestling and for a non-downloadable television series featuring wrestling and citing first usage in 2014. For the new project, the idea is to get together as much of the original team, both creative and on-air, as would be possible. I’m not sure what the situation would be for Matt Striker, who is now the voice of Impact. If this gets off the ground, and it’s always an if because it depends on the ability to sell it. The market right now is actually not that bad in the sense stations are talking. But nobody major has pulled the trigger on another wrestling promotion yet, even with the success of AEW. There is not the idea television that non-WWE pro wrestling can work and they are clamoring for sports and sports-like content. Even so, and even with AEW as a second brand doing far better than any MMA second brand, it’s in MMA that this is most notable. We’ve just seen new deals with Bellator, ONE, Combate Globo and PFL and know Invicta may be next and these are real deals, Showtime, TNT, Univision (Combate was on before but this new deal is for 30 shows a year) and ESPN 2 (an existing deal renewed as well). Obviously wrestling hasn’t been able to pull the trigger in the sense MLW, New Japan and NWA among others haven’t been able to get on stations at anywhere near the visibility level that the MMA groups have MLW has signed a mystery deal. Court Bauer just tweeted “signed” on 4/8 and noted that he’s under a gag order with the company he made the deal with until they announce it.

AEW: Brock Anderson (Arn’s son) and Tyler Senerchia (Hook) are doing matches in the afternoons before the tapings as much as possible to get them ready. They were both trained at Cody and QT Marshall’s school. They do their matches and then the veterans like Arn Anderson, Jake Roberts, Dustin Rhodes, and some of the others, including sometimes Tully Blanchard, go over with them what they did right and other points

WWE President Nick Khan was on Colin Cowherd on 4/7 and said that Lynch and Rousey would be returning soon. Rousey’s contract expired originally this past week. It’s possible they froze it from when she asked to take time off. The impression we had is she was always coming back for the planned Los Angeles WrestleMania which was supposed to be this year, but obviously that didn’t happen. It’s the same reason why whatever talk of Reigns vs. Dwayne Johnson we were told would not happen this year because IF Johnson wants one more match, it’s going to be a full stadium and preferably Los Angeles. If they add a Bayley talk segment to Mania, that would likely be Lynch’s return as the idea of her driving a big truck in at one of the two Mania shows during a Bayley talk show segment is something we were told was being planned at one point. That also explains Bayley seemingly not booked for the show after a year when she was women’s MVP

Brandon Thurston ran Google trends and this was some of the info as far as brand popularity. WWE has declined 17 straight quarters worldwide from the same quarter the previous year, with the start also coinciding with house show, network sub and merchandise declines. In the U.S., they declined 17 of the last 18 quarters with the second quarter of 2019 being up one percent from the second quarter of 2018 being the exception. AEW was up four percent in quarter one from last year worldwide and severn percent in the U.S. That’s after big fourth quarter of 2020 declines over 2019, although that’s to be expected given the giant interest level in the product in October of 2019 for the debut. New Japan was up 15 percent worldwide, but that’s because in 2020 New Japan shut down for the final month of the quarter. However in the U.S., New Japan has been down nine straight quarters, which coincides with Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks leaving the promotion. New Japan has been up and down in Japan, down obviously for most of 2020 which can be attributed to the pandemic. Impact has been up three of the last four quarters. Stardom has been up 20 straight quarters including the first quarter of this year doubling the first quarter of last year. Stardom in the U.S. has been up every quarter since first quarter 2017 except this current quarter, which declined 12 percent over last year. That’s likely due to the key person of interest in the first quarter by far would have been Hana Kimura from her appearances on Terrace House being perhaps the primary thing Stardom was known for in the U.S. at the time. ROH was down 32 percent worldwide and 25 percent in the U.S., from quarter one last year. ROH peaked in 2017 and has been down every quarter since For the first quarter of 2020 in the U.S., as far as mainstream, UFC was double that of WWE. WWE was 5.6 times higher than AEW, however only two days (the day of the Royal Rumble and of Elimination Chamber) was there more interest in WWE than the day of AEW Revolution, and Chamber was only one percent above Revolution for interest in the companies the same day. AEW on the day of Revolution had 60 percent of the interest in the U.S. as WWE on the day of Rumble. AEW is 4.5 times higher than Impact. Impact is almost double Bellator and more than double New Japan. New Japan is nearly double ROH. NWA is the next level down with ONE and PFL right under NWA. Stardom is well below all of them

The deal on Raw on 3/29 where Riddle forgot his lines both was and wasn’t a shoot. It wasn’t planned to go like that. He did stumble over words which happens all the time and that’s why interviews are pretaped, as this one was. But because of Riddle’s character being comedy, Vince saw the messed up pretape and thought it was funnier than the actual scripted promo where he was going to say a bunch of nonsense for laughs, so it aired instead of doing a second take

Ratings:

SPOILER: show

Raw on 4/5, the go-home show for WrestleMania, but head-to-head with the NCAA basketball finals, did 1,701,000 viewers and an 0.52 in 18-49 (666,000 viewers). Given the competition, the game, which started at 9:20 p.m. on CBS, and did 16,922,000 viewers and 4.12 in 18-49, the number has to be considered good even though it does tie for the least viewers for Raw since football ended. It was the most-watched non-football sports event in the United States since 2019. Still, Raw beat several of the pandemic and football season numbers and the competition was tougher than almost every football game during the second half of the show. There wasn’t much of note to the numbers past what has to be considered a surprise, which is that 18-49 male viewers actually grew slightly in hour three from hour two, and were identical with hour one. In all other younger demos, there was a major decline during the show. There was also not a major decline over 50. Obviously the go-home show for Mania helped keep things steady and by all rights the number should have been worse. As far as cable programming, Raw was first in 18-49, second in women 18-49, first in men 18-49, first in 18-34, first in women 12-34 and first in men 12-34. It was tenth in total viewers, trailing nine news shows. From last week, which went against tournament games that drew 5,992,000 and 1.36 in 18-49 and 6,447,000 and 1.71 in 18-49, the big losses were in 18-34. Raw was even with viewers from last week, down 7.1 percent in 18-49 and 28.6 percent in 18-34. As compared to the same week last year, which was the Raw after Mania, Raw was down 19.0 percent in viewers, 25.7 percent in 18-49 and 34.2 percent in 18-34. The first hour did 1,759,000 viewers. The second hour did 1,723,000 viewers. The third hour did 1,622,000 viewers. The show did 93,000 viewers in male 18-34 (down 30.1 percent from last week), 82,000 in women 18-34 (down 28.1 percent), 316,000 in men 35-49 (down 5.7 percent) and 175,000 in women 35-49 (up 29.6 percent). As far as the first-to-third hour declines, women 18-49 fell 20.5 percent from hour one to three, but men 18-49 had no decline at all. Teenage girls declined 31.4 percent and teenage boys declined 30.3 percent. Over 50 only dropped 3.8 percent, which was unusually low and given the game wasn’t on in the first hour, that’s a big surprise since most of the game’s viewers would have been over 50. The show did a 0.29 in 12-17 (up 7.4 percent from last week), 0.25 in 18-34 (down 29.1 percent), 0.79 in 35-49 (up 4.5 percent) and 0.79 in 50+ (up 2.6 percent).

Smackdown on 4/2 did a 1.27 rating and 2,137,000 viewers (1.39 viewers per home, making it the largest viewers per home of any pro wrestling show this past week and the best any WWE show has done in recent memory). The show did an 0.57 (733,000 viewers) in 18-49 and 0.37 in 18-34. The one key take out of this is that Logan Paul meant basically nothing to the numbers, since every key category was slightly down from last week. Smackdown was third for the night among network programming in 18-49 trailing Blue Bloods and Shark Tank at 0.65. It was second to Blue Bloods, at 0.42, in 18-34. It also lost to an NCAA women’s basketball tournament final four game on ESPN that did 0.59 in 18-49 and 0.41 in 18-34, along with 2,692,000 viewers. Among the eight shows on network TV, Smackdown was sixth in women 18-49, first in men 18-49 and its usual last in 50+ as well as last with total viewers. As compared to the previous week, Smackdown was down 3.8 percent in homes, down 2.5 percent in viewers, down 0.9 percent in 18-49 and down 5.1 percent in 18-34. As compared to one year ago, Smackdown was down 14.2 percent in homes, down 10.9 percent in viewers, down 12.5 percent in 18-49 but down only 7.5 percent in 18-34. Smackdown did 161,000 viewers in male 18-34 (down 4.7 percent from last week), 97,000 in women 18-34 (down 4.0 percent), 276,000 in males 35-49 (up 3.0 percent) and 200,000 in women 35-49 (down 1.0 percent).

The final Wednesday night saw AEW finish in fifth place for the night with 688,000 viewers and 0.28 in 18-49 (366,000 viewers), while NXT finished No. 11 with 768,000 viewers and an 0.22 in 18-49 (282,000 viewers). As noted elsewhere, the NXT numbers would have been up noticeably, probably in the high 800s or low 900s in total viewers and around 340-355,000 in 18-49 for the Takeover show and would have probably placed seventh overall. AEW was fourth in male 18-49, 19th in women 18-49, sixth in 18-34, seventh in women 12-34 and fifth in men 12-34 for the night. NXT was 13th in women 18-49, 8th in men 18-49, 18th in 18-34, 17th in women 12-34 and sixth in men 12-34. Really, considering what AEW did last week not against Takeover, the number has to be a mild success, but they did have a big main event and Mike Tyson ... As compared to last week, AEW was down 1.7 percent in viewers, up 7.3 percent in 18-49 and up 27.7 percent in 18-34. NXT was up 17.4 percent in viewers, up 5.6 percent in 18-49 and up and down 27.5 percent in 18-34. As compared to one year ago on the same day, and that was a monster news day, AEW was down 0.6 percent in viewers, up 7.7 percent in 18-49 and 15.4 percent in 18-34. NXT was up 10.8 percent in viewers and 15.8 percent in 18-49. We don’t have the 18-34 number comparison because NXT wasn’t in the top 50 this week last year. In the main event segment, AEW had Young Bucks & Jon Moxley vs. Kenny Omega & Doc Gallows & Karl Anderson which did 724,000 viewers and 376,000 in 18-49. NXT had Io Shirai vs. Raquel Gonzalez which did 858,000 viewers and 349,000 in 18-49. NXT would have won in 18-49 in this segment if the show wasn’t on Peacock, and if you follow the last several weeks, Gonzalez is a major drawing card. Another key regarding her appeal with Shirai and this match to the AEW audience is that as soon as AEW went off the air, you had a switch of 247,000 viewers and 99,000 in 18-49 to NXT. The 1,106,000 viewers and 443,000 in 18-49 for the last few minutes of this match could wind up as NXT’s biggest of the year and was the biggest since late 2019. And keep in mind you can probably add another 100,000 to 148,000 to that number from streaming and given that, more people watched the finish of that match live likely than any NXT match aside from the first week the show debuted unopposed. AEW was three of the four key demos, but did lose for the second straight week in women 18-49. AEW had 54,000 in men 18-34 (up 17.4 percent from last week) to 34,000 for NXT (down 42.4 percent from last week–but this is the age group that the streaming numbers probably made the most difference. AEW had 52,000 in women 18-34 (up 40.5 percent from last week) to 32,000 for NXT (same as last week) In men 35-49, AEW had 192,000 viewers (down 2.5 percent from last week) to122.000 for NXT (up 17.3 percent from last week). AEW had 68,000 women 35-49 (up 11.5 percent from last week) to 94,000 for NXT (up 30.6 percent from last week). In the first quarter, AEW did 691,000 viewers and 370,000 in 18-49 for Adam Page vs. Max Caster. NXT did 700,000 viewers and 261,000 in 18-49 for Nita Strauss singing and Pete Dunne vs. Kushida. In the second quarter, AEW did 728,000 viewers and 407,000 in 18-49mFor the Death Triangle interview segment with Best Friends, Orange Cassidy and Kris Statlander, and mostly the long Chris Jericho promo. This was AEW’s peaking 18-49, men 18-49 and women 18-49. NXT did 677,000 viewers and 235,000 in 18-49 for the ending on Dunne vs. Kushida and the beginning of the gauntlet match. In the third quarter, AEW did 640,000 viewers and 363,000 in 18-49 for Christian and Taz, and the beginning of Jurassic Express vs. Bear Countr6. NXT did 766,000 viewers and 269,000 in 18-49 for the rest of the gauntlet. In the fourth quarter, AEW did 632,000 viewers and 338,000 in 18-49 for the rest of Jurassic Express vs. Bear Country, QT Marshall and his group, Sting, Jake Roberts and Lance Archer and Team Taz. NXT did 737,000 viewers and 263,000 in 18-49 for Walter vs. Tommaso Ciampa. In the fifth quarter, AEW did 620,000 viewers and 337,000 in 18-49 for Darby Allin vs. JD Drake and the post-match brawl with Sting, The Hardy Family and Dark Order. NXT did 817,000 viewers and 282,000 in 18-49 for Walter vs. Ciampa. In the sixth quarter AEW did 732,000 viewers and 366,000 in 18-49 for the Jericho beatdown and Mike Tyson and the Inner Circle, a Britt Baker promo and most of Tay Conti vs. Bunny. NXT did 737,000 viewers and 262,000 in 18-49 for the beginning of the three-way for the tag titles. In the seventh quarter, AEW did 741,000 viewers and 369,000 in 18-49 for the end of Conti vs. Bunny, the post-match, and the beginning of the main event six-man tag. This was AEW’s total viewer peak. NXT did 738,000 viewers and 281,000 in 18-49 for the ending of the tag title match. In the eighth quarter, AEW with the six-man tag lost 17,000 viewers and gained 7,000 in 18-49. NXT with Gonzalez vs. Shirai gained 117,000 viewers and 63,000 in 18-49, which are huge gains against the NXT main event. This was also NXT’s peak in everything. AEW did a 0.11 in 12-17 (up 37.5 percent from last week), 0.15 in 18-34 (up 22.9 percent), 0.41 in 35-49 (up 5.0 percent) and 0.24 in 50+ (down 17.2 percent) ... NXT did a 0.11 in 12-17 (up 52.9 percent), 0.10 in 18-34 (down 27.5 percent), 0.34 in 35-49 (up 22.7 percent) and 0.38 in 50+ (up 18.8 percent).

The 3/31 episode of AEW did 1.28 viewers per home, which was the lowest in the history of the show. The previous record low was June 20, 2020 at 1.30. The record high was 1.72 on January 20, 2021. The number may mean nothing to people, but the number itself points to the underlying problem. Keep in mind this was just one week, but the number is well down and has been down in recent weeks. In fact, since 2/17, it has declined every week, going from 1.53, which is a great number for sports, down to its present level, where it was well below Smackdown and the first time in recent memory it was not the No. 1 pro wrestling show as far as families/people watching together. But it’s not so much the number but digging into the number that tells you a lot. And it’s nothing that hasn’t been a trend of late. Believe it or not, more homes than usual (up four percent from the usual number) were watching the show but the audience was low because of what AEW has been more successful at that almost any sports event except for major playoff games, the second, third or even fourth viewer in the home, had fallen so much ... And it is the direction, the heavy violence, which is what drew that PPV audience. That direction, like ECW or UFC, is going to draw more heavily with men and less with women. And that’s what has happened here. You can argue it’s their niche, but they had a very good niche a few months back when they were the young family success and that has lessened of late to the point while still skewing younger than most, the second viewer in the home has gone from astonishingly high to normal sports levels. The key is looking at exactly where the decline is. The 3/31 number may be an outlier. AEW was doing well in that category only a month ago, but it has declined in the last few weeks. This past week was unusually low, but the decline has become a pattern. To understand what that means, basically in enough families, the second viewer, usually a woman, sometimes a son or daughter, or even a husband, or perhaps a second guy who was the roommate, has stopped watching. The actual number of homes watching the guys watching really hasn’t changed. The 700,000 number last week (this week’s number isn’t indicative going against a Takeover show, and some would argue, and our response indicates there is a lot to this, that the 3/31 number is also due to the build to Takeover the next week) came because, based on the actual increase in homes watching, one would have expected by normal AEW standards, roughly 120,000 viewers who had watched with another member of their family didn’t watch. Many of them did watch NXT, since total 18-49 numbers were steady. In particular, it was the women, where NXT beat AEW in key demos when that hasn’t been the case in a long time, which made the difference. AEW has shown no decline in over 50 and its Males 35-49 are actually up, the latter likely because of that direction, and that audience is also likely the one buying the PPV shows. The decline on 3/31 was about 70,000 falling between 18 and 49, based on normal levels for the numbers of home watching. That 700,000 viewers would have been 820,000 and the 341,000 in 18-49 would have been 411,000. What the number of homes watching (545,000) should have delivered based on normal company trends would have been 259,000 guys and 152,000 women 18-49. The actual numbers were 243,000 and 98,000. So that’s 16,000 male 18-49 second or third viewers in homes that weren’t watching and 53,000 female second viewers between 18 and 49. Since over 50 viewers were up, the other loss is about 50,000 viewers, perhaps a little more, under the age of 18. Those viewers were the second viewer in the household since first viewers were up from usual. It also should be noted that on 3/24, which would be the week after the Britt Baker vs. Thunder Rosa match, that males were 273,000 in 18-49, or up from what you’d expect from that many homes, but women were 121,000, down from the 152,000. The fall the next week may be what happened or perhaps NXT related since NXT picked up those women (AEW went from 121,000 to 98,000 while NXT went from 74,000 to 104,000 so overall women viewing last week was actually up but AEW was down 19 percent). For 4/7, women were at 120,000 but we don’t have viewers per home, but it was essentially the same as 3/24. NXT’s women audience went from 104,000 to 126,000, and that doesn’t include Peacock streaming, so NXT likely won handily with women again, but with a Takeover show, it should have. But AEW did go from doubling to losing two weeks in a row. Next week everything should be way up so any comparisons and trends start next week like it’s day one, unless you want to compare with a few months back when AEW was unopposed. While you can’t credit or blame anything to one specific thing, given what has happened in recent weeks and just asking different people, the one thing that to me is very clear is that Baker vs. Rosa drew all kinds of male NXT fans to cross over seeing the bloody women, was one of the best and most talked about matches in the history of Dynamite. It is never one thing in specific, but a trend that has not been positive to women viewing with men in the same home. The decline of women dates back much farther, but the VPH decline really has hit starting on 2/17. Some have blamed MTV Challenge which is popular with women, but Challenge started before 2/17, as did the NBA, which is AEW’s other major weekly competition besides NXT each week, and AEW was hit in recent weeks and NXT was not. If you have guys 18-49 complaining about the product, while the complaints may be valid, the reality is that they are doing well, even ahead of what you’d expect most weeks. And even last week AEW was up 13.7 percent in 18-49 from the same week last year. So while viewers are up-and-down, and some weeks look great and some look bad, last week in comparison to a year ago does not look bad. AEW also fell to 11th place for the week in youngest skewing sports event on national television over the past week, behind four NBA games and six afternoon and morning soccer games. That’s still very good, but a lower level than it has been in the past. But that’s nothing to be concerned over given it was first just the prior week and the younger age of the audience is a major strength of the show. Ironically, one may expect that to change without NXT, since NXT dominated with viewers over 50, and if AEW picks up new over 50 viewers that had watched NXT (and there is no guarantee that will happen), it could age the overall audience. It’s less likely to pick up as many younger viewers since NXT wasn’t taking many of those viewers away most weeks. With NXT doing so well and AEW doing record lows over 50 head-to-head on 4/7, that will artificially skew AEW extremely high in that category next week.

Basically AEW's recent declines in viewership is due to their home average shrank and NXT snagging more women viewers than usual away from them. Its also starting to resemble more like an actual sports show in regards to becoming a lot more male heavy than it had been doing in recent months.