Wrestling Thread

Laparkafan

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Wonder what Smackdown ended up doing. TNA went up but only by about 20-25K, AEW's number skyrocketed. Though I suppose you could say a 25K increase on 175K total from the previous week is a big increase when you look at it in terms of percentage.

Most logical explanation would be a change to data collection and calculation methods at Nielsen.
Think it was 1.3
 

CrimeDawg18

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Smackdown did 1,260,000 viewers which was almost 300,000 more than the week before.

As much as I haven't been a fan of the "Eliminator matches" it was nice to see the challenger actually beat the champion last night and get a title shot.
 
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American Dragon

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Yea, and he both makes it look awesome while apparently being pretty damn safe about it. Just a great looking move.

WWE could learn a think or two about your “top guys” having really good looking finishers. That stupid kick Trick uses looks awful and we’re supposed to be believe he’s a future FOC? At least three of your upper mid-card guys use frog splashes? Whatever that leg-drop/kick thing Hayes uses? No thanks.
Nothing is as bad as Bayley's finisher, it's just a damn belly to belly suplex isn't it? Or did she finally get rid of that?
 
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American Dragon

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Andrade ain't been booked this good since he was in CMLL and New Japan over a decade ago. I'd do something really bold and also fresh with the AEW title booking.
 

American Dragon

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Australia agenda: put the belt on Brody and have Andrade win. Have the Abolish ICE guy and the Mexican main event Revolution in California and let the "FUC* ICE" chants rain endlessly
 
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American Dragon

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AEW and NFL are collaborating for Lucah Libre masks for each team. Will be available to purchase starting on the first day of the NFL Draft.
 

American Dragon

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Dynamite’s demo went up damn near 100% compared to last week when the total viewership spiked. Is the momentum of a generally strong year of booking and a hot main event/world title scene finally starting to pay tangible dividends?

 

American Dragon

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And I don’t think the changes to the new methodology have anything to do with this week’s demo pop.

Last week the viewership went up a ton for Dynamite but the demos barely changed, going up merely 0.01 points, essentially white noise worth of difference.

The viewership this week was only 1K greater than last week’s, but the demo went from a .09 to a .15.

So unless Nielsen made more alterations, which I suppose is always possible, that is an insanely high bump in just one week. But mostly everything else outside of wrestling was pretty consistent from last week, so highly unlikely Nielsen made any more alterations.

That’s nearly double what NXT is drawing now and nearly 4x what TNA drew last week, you know the company that Matt Hardy said is going to challenge AEW for the #2 spot 🤣
 
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American Dragon

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The whole Raheem nickname is making fun of him because he was trying to explain racism to a black man in AEW. What a moron.

 

OliverSimmonsTwinBrother

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Haven't watched wrestling in a bit but apparently things are wayyyy different now. There was a vulgar chant at some minor league that got national attention and the leader of the "internet wrestling community " (Rovert) is declaring victory .

If Stone Cold comes back let me know, otherwise y'all can keep this lol
 

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American Dragon

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Haven't watched wrestling in a bit but apparently things are wayyyy different now. There was a vulgar chant at some minor league that got national attention and the leader of the "internet wrestling community " (Rovert) is declaring victory .

If Stone Cold comes back let me know, otherwise y'all can keep this lol
AEW is a multi-billion dollar company, that’s no minor league.
 

American Dragon

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Multi billion??? So like more than like most of the NFL, NBA and all of the NHL teams? Thats insane. Do you have a legitimate source for this?
Get your knowledge up.

The average value of an NBA, NFL, MLB, or major Soccer league team is worth between 2.6 to 7.1 billion.


Forbes valued AEW at $2 billion

 

American Dragon

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Heck yea is he wwe or something?
Nope, allegedly signed to AEW. Wrestling contracts aren’t a matter of public record like in pro sports, so if a signing isn’t announced then we don’t officially know if it’s official signed.

He was part of his dad’s retirement match in AEW then decided to become a pro wrestler after that experience. To get experience he’s working the indies and some matches with ROH, which is basically AEW’s developmental brand. Think of it like how an MLB franchise will sign a player then stash him in the minors until he’s ready to be called up to the major league team.
 

Laparkafan

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You think I’m joking? Nope, only partially, because the female 18-49 demo this week was up 135% over the average of the past four weeks.

View attachment 1179163
Maybe they like MJF too - he hasn’t been back very long either?

Maybe your right but he didn’t bring that demo pop to Smackdown and he was on most weeks especially with his Carmelo Hayes feud.
 

Laparkafan

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Multi billion??? So like more than like most of the NFL, NBA and all of the NHL teams? Thats insane. Do you have a legitimate source for this?
The guy that runs AEW is Tony khan

His dad owns the Jacksonville jaguars and had so much money he told his kids he’d write them a blank check to do whatever they wanted and Tony said he wanted to run a wrestling company since he’s always been a fan and used to go to wwe house shows in Champaign Illinois.
 
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Wrestling Faking GIF
 
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American Dragon

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Maybe they like MJF too - he hasn’t been back very long either?

Maybe your right but he didn’t bring that demo pop to Smackdown and he was on most weeks especially with his Carmelo Hayes feud.
Different audience. Wasn’t presented as a big deal like he is in AEW. Wasn’t stripping in WWE. Wasn’t being a ladies man in WWE.
 

Nightwish

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Didn't Andrade just come back? It's not like he's been doing this gimmick for months lol. There's three women on YouTube who react to wrestling which includes AEW. Fletcher sat with them for a video a while back, which was incredibly smart of AEW to set up. My guess is that's opened up a new audience for AEW plus the new metrics used punished wrestling and no other sport and that's ended. Now NXT (while stripped of talent), SD, and AEW are suddenly doing better ratings wise. MJF also puts himself out there, always has. Turns out, your champion should be doing interviews and appearances galore and not just saying he's the men's world champion as hundreds online repeatedly say "that's our cowboy." MJF is a mini-marketing machine. In WWE, guys like Punk and Rollins are everywhere outside of 'the Universe.' Lastly, a particular chant by AEW fans got mainstream attention and lately, it's been a popular thing to say, so that's gotten more positive attention than negative. MJF's reaction was hilarious btw.
 

Laparkafan

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Didn't Andrade just come back? It's not like he's been doing this gimmick for months lol. There's three women on YouTube who react to wrestling which includes AEW. Fletcher sat with them for a video a while back, which was incredibly smart of AEW to set up. My guess is that's opened up a new audience for AEW plus the new metrics used punished wrestling and no other sport and that's ended. Now NXT (while stripped of talent), SD, and AEW are suddenly doing better ratings wise. MJF also puts himself out there, always has. Turns out, your champion should be doing interviews and appearances galore and not just saying he's the men's world champion as hundreds online repeatedly say "that's our cowboy." MJF is a mini-marketing machine. In WWE, guys like Punk and Rollins are everywhere outside of 'the Universe.' Lastly, a particular chant by AEW fans got mainstream attention and lately, it's been a popular thing to say, so that's gotten more positive attention than negative. MJF's reaction was hilarious btw.
Yup not to mention Rollins was a presenter during the nfl honors - like you said marketing does wonders which I think AEW has room for improvement and MJF helps with that.
 

American Dragon

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Didn't Andrade just come back? It's not like he's been doing this gimmick for months lol. There's three women on YouTube who react to wrestling which includes AEW. Fletcher sat with them for a video a while back, which was incredibly smart of AEW to set up. My guess is that's opened up a new audience for AEW plus the new metrics used punished wrestling and no other sport and that's ended. Now NXT (while stripped of talent), SD, and AEW are suddenly doing better ratings wise. MJF also puts himself out there, always has. Turns out, your champion should be doing interviews and appearances galore and not just saying he's the men's world champion as hundreds online repeatedly say "that's our cowboy." MJF is a mini-marketing machine. In WWE, guys like Punk and Rollins are everywhere outside of 'the Universe.' Lastly, a particular chant by AEW fans got mainstream attention and lately, it's been a popular thing to say, so that's gotten more positive attention than negative. MJF's reaction was hilarious btw.
Got a link to that YouTube? I'm not familiar with it.

Doubt the "Fuc* ICE" chant this week had much of an impact on AEW's TV ratings. These sepcific Nielsen ratings are live + same day (they track a whole lot more than just live + same day).

My biggest problem with the Elite since day one is their lack of marketing. Bucks and Omega were EVPs but rarely ever got out and marketed the product. Hangman has always been an especially private person. There's certainly responsibilities that come with being in the positions they have been in and are in and I don't feel like they have held up their end of the deal in that respect.

People watching in the eastern and central time zones would have only had 2-3 hours to watch it after it aired live. Pacific time zone doesn't even get the show live but they can watch it live thru the TBS app or on HBO Max, so I'm sure the Pacific folks aren't a particularly large TV audience. Not sure about the situation with the Mountain time zone.


Above article written by the same guy who discovered a previous flaw in Nielsen's system that they fixed.

Why Did Ratings Go Up This Week?​

Nielsen changed the number they multiply against.

Every TV rating is a multiplication problem. Nielsen’s panel tracks what percentage of homes are watching a show. Then they multiply that percentage against the total number of homes that have cable TV. That total is called the “universe estimate.”

On January 26, Nielsen adopted new data from an independent study that said the cable universe was bigger than Nielsen thought. More cable homes in the equation means every cable show’s ratings go up, even if the exact same people are watching the exact same shows.

That is what happened. The multiplier got bigger.

What Is a Universe Estimate?​

Think of it this way. Nielsen’s panel says 1% of cable homes watched AEW Dynamite. The next question is: 1% of how many homes?

If Nielsen says there are 70 million cable homes, 1% is 700,000 viewers. If the universe expands and now there are 75 million cable homes, the same 1% becomes 750,000. The show didn’t get more popular. The denominator changed.

The universe estimate is base number in television measurement. Every rating, every viewer count, every demo number is built on top of it.

What Is DASH and Where Did It Come From?​

DASH is the study that caught the error. It stands for Devices and Accounts Study of Hybrid viewing. It is run by the Advertising Research Foundation in partnership with NORC at the University of Chicago.

What About the 18-49 Demo?​

The DASH correction barely moved it.

AEW Dynamite gained roughly 146,000 viewers over 50, but only about 15,000 in 18-49. NXT gained about 60,000 over 50 and only 6,000 in 18-49. The total viewer number looks much better. The number that actually determines how much the show is worth to TBS or USA Network is nearly unchanged.

This makes sense when you think about what the correction actually did. The biggest fix was recovering cable subscribers who use apps instead of cable boxes. Cable subscribers skew older. They are established households that never actually cut the cord. Putting them back into the universe naturally adds more older viewers to the count. The correction found the people the algorithm was incorrectly erasing, and those people are predominantly over 50.

Basically, Nielsen was undercounting the # of households that have cable TV. When they measure ratings, it's based on % of households watching. So if Dynamite was watched by 1% of households, and you increase the # of households with cable, they'll see a viewership increase even if it stays at 1%. Because 1% of 1000 (10) is more than 1% of 100 (1), after all.

But as it says above, the size of the 18-49 demo didn't only changed marginally. So Dynamite this week going from 0.09 to 0.15 is simply a massive increase in 18-49s wanting to watch this week as opposed to simply a math change.

To say the new model that punished wrestling has ended is just not true though. All this system did was increase the # of cable subscribers. It didn't fix the problems with the demo rating.
 
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