The ratings are in for the first installment of the Wednesday Night Wars, and it is AEW who will be breaking out a little bit of the bubbly.
AEW Dynamite debuted to 1.4 million viewers, with NXT having 891,000 viewers (down 11% from last week).
TNT executives were said to have believed anything above 500,000 would be a success, and this has well outdone that.
This isn’t a good sign for NXT as WWE loaded the show with title matches, had limited commercials, and had a 15 minutes overrun. With the current roster, they will burn out of big matches quickly if they continue like this.
WWE issued a statement congratulating AEW on Dynamite’s premiere, as you can read below, probably anticipating the first-week defeat based on early projections.
“Congratulations to AEW on a successful premiere. The real winners of last night’s head-to-head telecasts of NXT on USA Network & AEW on TNT are the fans, who can expect Wednesday nights to be a competitive and wild ride as this is a marathon, not a one-night sprint.”
