Quote:
Originally Posted by The God of TPWW
Ratings and demos mean nothing for wrestling
The NHL does lower ratings and demos than Dynamite on the same Network but has $100 million dollar in advertising. It's a "legacy" brand. The WWE is inching towards being that. Stephanie McMahon does not get NEARLY enough credit for all her work changing the perception of the company in the business world.
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They mean what a network wants them to mean at the end of the day. They could be used to tout its success, or they could drop wrestling tomorrow citing them as not being sufficient enough. Numbers can be made to do tricks.
To play devil’s advocate, the NHL is a sport where different teams are going to be playing against each other, which means that even though the week-to-week ratings might be lower, you may end up reaching more people over the period of a season. But it’s true that even if that weren’t the case, hockey fans are probably more valuable to advertisers than many wrestling fans. That’s just the perception, and it may be backed up by trends in spending and the ability of those people to influence.
The analysis and interpretation of the ratings by many wrestling fans is irritating though, because as you point out, they don’t mean what wrestling fans make them out to mean. At the end of the day, a network is going to care more about the advertising revenue than they are that specific number. If a show that gets 650k, a demo of 0.28 or whatever, is more profitable than a show that does double that, having 1.3 million viewers and a 0.56 in a demo isn’t necessarily going to save you.
And that’s why people who act like Dynamite is “catching” Raw are missing so much of the bigger picture. Never mind that Warner splits the ad revenue with AEW, WWE is an established brand with much broader international exposure and that is a PG show, which is going to open it up to advertisers in different ways. Plus it’s way more successful with women. And there are way more ways to engage now. YouTube, Peacock, Hulu and even alternate deals (some places order the full shows as well as a one hour version).
I think part of it is a hangover from the Monday Night Wars, where cable was advancing, instead of declining, with wrestling at the forefront and the actual fate of the promotions at stake. But a part of it are wrestling journalists looking for a story in the numbers to always have something to print for an audience that is willing to buy it. And wrestling’s nature is testosterone-driven combat, so it lends itself to a natural “A vs. B” scenario, lol.