Over the past couple weeks, we and others who are interested in how various wrestling shows fare in the television ratings noticed that the numbers for WWE and AEW’s programs were down. It wasn’t terribly unusual for this time of year — football season just started, after all. The decline coincided with delays in reports about each night’s viewers and ratings though, which should have told us something bigger was going on.
And if we’d paid attention to the original source of the numbers we pass along
each week, we’d have had a clue about that bigger something. Nielson announced in early September that they were moving to a new model of tracking audiences: Panel + Big Data. They even provided a quick video explaining the change, at least from a 10,000 foot view.
From that and others’ explanations — as usual with things related to the business of professional wrestling, I’m leaning heavily on Brandon Thurston’s writing for Wrestlenomics here, and encourage you to support that work if you really want to dig into this topic, financial reports, legal proceedings or anything similar — we basically know that Nielson is now somehow integrating data collected by streaming devices and smart TVs about what we’re watching into their existing methodology. That methodology is already an opaque formula they’ve tweaked a few times over the years as technology changed and trends shifted, but it remains based on first-hand information from Nielson “homes”. Reports from people in those residencies are what Nielson refers to as their “panel”.
Neilson’s never shared the underlying numbers they use to calculate ratings. So as they enter into the realm of big, data-driven entertainment and/or tech companies such as Google and Netflix who’ve never been transparent about such things, they’re certainly not going to pull back the curtain on their Panel + Big Data calculus.
They did tell us that they’d start reporting Panel + Big Data numbers with the official start of the fall television season on Sept. 22, and that those numbers would be released Oct. 1… so that explains the delays in ratings reports over the past couple weeks.
Nielson’s changeover date means we have a handful of shows we have both Panel and Panel + Big Data numbers for, but comparing them doesn’t provide any clear trend:
It’s a very small sample, but it doesn’t give us much confidence we’ll see a consistent delta between numbers reported using the old and new methods. It’s tempting to use that as an excuse to do away with paying attention to ratings altogether, especially considering the way many in our community use them in tribal debates or bad faith arguments. But if you’re interested in or care about the business of metrics, they remain essential. Here’s Thurston answering the “why does this matter” question:
While TV ratings have become harder to understand as the number of cable households has declined and entertainment options have grown, viewership — and indeed the ranking of that viewership relative to programming generally — remains perhaps the most important metric in pro wrestling economics. The size of the audiences for WWE and AEW programs — even if those audiences are smaller than in prior years — is what allows major networks to justify paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year for those telecasts in an increasingly competitive media environment.
Here at Cageside, we’ll keep plugging away at them for the dozens (and dozens) of us who care… denoting when Nielson’s reporting methodology changed in our year-to-date ratings lists. And speaking of those, here are a couple updated ones.
This includes Sept. 27’s live Collision (results here), which did better numbers in the P+BD era than both the previous Saturday’s afternoon All Out pre-show or Sept. 13’s regularly scheduled show did in the Panel era:
- Sept. 28.2024: 435K viewers / .13 rating
- Oct. 5**: 269K / .05
- Oct. 19: 346K / .10
- Oct. 26: 321K / .09
- Nov. 2†: 349K / .09
- Nov. 9: 322K / .10
- Nov. 16: 356K / .11
- Nov. 30*†: 144K / .03
- Dec. 7: 278K / .07
- Dec. 14: 246K / .09
- Dec. 21: 635K / .20
- Jan. 4: 345K / .09
- Jan. 11: 337K / .09
- Jan. 17: 342K / .10
- Jan. 25**: 250K / .07
- Feb. 1**: 197K / .04
- Feb. 8: 387K / .10
- Feb. 15*: 502K / .21 (Grand Slam Australia)
- Feb. 22: 421K / .12
- March 1**: 280K / .06
- March 8: 363K / .10
- March 15: 408K / .10
- March 22*: 554K / .20
- March 23*: 584K / .22
- March 29: 339K / .09
- April 5: 335K / .08
- April 12: 455K / .12
- April 17*: 353K / .08
- April 26*: 707K / .21
- May 3*: 341K / .06
- May 8*: 382K / .09
- May 17: 398K / .08
- May 22*: 353K / .08
- May 31*: 504K / .18
- June 4*: 380K / .10
- June 11*: 397K / .09
- June 21: 426K / .10
- June 26*: 285K / .08
- July 5: 310K / .10
- July 10*: 323K / .06
- July 19: 348K / .06
- July 26: 327K / .08
- July 31*: 409K / .10
- Aug. 9: 423K / .08
- Aug. 16: 268K / .06
- Aug. 23: 281K / .07
- Aug. 30: 195K / .04
- Sept. 6: 300K / .07
- Sept. 13: 235K / .05
- Sept. 20:*†: 184K / .04
- Sept. 27†º: 248K / .05
* Aired outside its usual Saturday 8-10 p.m. ET primetime slot and/or on a network other than TNT
** Ran directly opposite a WWE show or event
† Ran the same day as a WWE event
º Nielson began using Panel + Big Data calculation
The Sept. 30 NXT — which featured fallout from both that brand’s No Mercy PLE and TNA’s Victory Road special the weekend before, and was building toward next Tuesday’s big Showdown crossover show (results here, and a review here) — was down compared to either of the previous Tuesday’s numbers:
- Oct. 1*: 895,000 / .26
- Oct. 8: 874,000 / .24
- Oct. 15: 639,000 / .18
- Oct. 22: 702,000 / .16
- Oct. 29: 588,000 / .14
- Nov. 6**: 619,000 / .17
- Nov. 12: 631,000 / .16
- Nov. 19: 672,000 / .19
- Nov. 26: 632,000 / .15
- Dec. 3: 593,000 / .13
- Dec. 10: 680,000 / .17
- Dec. 17: 708,000 / .16
- Dec. 24: 723,000 / .14
- Dec. 31: 626,000 / .15
- Jan. 7, 2025:
957,000 / .25798,000 / .21 - Jan. 14: 779,000 / .17
- Jan. 21: 812,000 / .22
- Jan. 28: 827,000 / .19
- Feb. 4: 766,000 / .20
- Feb. 11: 801,000 / .18
- Feb. 18: 689,000 / .17
- Feb. 25: 799,000 / .19
- March 4: 698,000 / .15
- March 11: 732,000 / .15
- March 18: 676,000 / .15
- March 25: 741,000 / .16
- April 1: 650,000 / .15
- April 8: 683,000 / .17
- April 15: 663,000 / .14
- April 22: 686,000 / .17
- April 29: 674,000 / .15
- May 6: 652,000 / .14
- May 13: 664,000 / .15
- May 20: 697,000 / .13
- May 27: 650,000 / .14
- June 3: 684,000 / .15
- June 10: 726,000 / .15
- June 17: 660,000 / .16
- June 24: 729,000 / .16
- July 1: 627,000 / .15
- July 8: 695,000 / .16
- July 16: 586,000 / .12
- July 22: 747,000 / .16
- July 29: 675,000 / .16
- Aug. 5: 740,000 / .16
- Aug. 12: 728,000 / .17
- Aug. 19: 675,000 / .15
- Aug. 26: 616,000 / .12
- Sept. 2: 655,000 / .14
- Sept. 9: 654,000 / .14
- Sept. 16: 737,000 / .17
- Sept. 23: 707,000 / .17
- Sept. 30º: 572,000 / .10
* Moved to broadcast network The CW effective this date
** Aired outside its normal Tuesday night primetime slot
º Nielson began using Panel + Big Data calculation
Talk though it all in the comments below.
