Fans have been talking a lot about AEW Collision’s ratings as they have been steadily declining for the first three weeks.
The premiere episode had 816,000 total viewers and a key demo rating of 0.33. The June 24 episode drew 595,000 viewers with a 0.21 key demo rating, while the July 1st episode drew 452,000 viewers with a 0.13 key demo rating last week. The show drew 580,000 viewers and a 0.21 rating on July 8th.
On Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer mentioned that this week’s show (July 15, 2023) is considered a big one within the promotion.
“For, that third hour (Battle of the Belts) is like, do they have high expectations for that third hour? Not that I’m aware of. No. I haven’t discussed that with anybody. I know that if they do a number (Collision’s ratings) similar to last week every Saturday, they will be very happy. If it’s way down from Saturday, they will not be happy, especially because it’s a loaded show with a tag team title match, and with the Punk match with Starks, I think that if it’s close to last week, it’s great. If it’s close to the July 4th weekend show, with this loaded lineup, it’s not good, you know? I don’t think that we still have a read on what Saturday’s gonna do on a normal week because I didn’t think last week was a normal show. Last week was much better than normal. As far as the normal show, I’m thinking, I don’t think this week is either, I’m thinking maybe Newark is when we’re gonna, like, kind of go, unless he totally loads up Newark too. And I think he has to. I think on Saturday night, he has to kind of load it more than Wednesday because it’s just a harder night because people have more options on what they wanna do Wednesday. I think he’s got… he can’t take his audience for granted because when he does put on a weak show, the audience will go down. Yeah. That’s the reality. But I think that on Wednesday, you kind of have a base, and on Friday and Saturday, I don’t think that the base is much, much smaller. Friday’s (Rampage) kind of whatever, you know, nobody’s really worrying about what Friday does anymore. It’s like if it’s good if it’s bad, it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t, you know. I mean, it matters, but it’s not of grave concern. But the Saturday number is something significant that everyone’s looking at right now. Yeah.”
For the show, AEW has brought in WWE Hall of Famer Jushin Thunder Liger.
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
