AEW Dynamite Viewership & Ratings Report, 7/17/2024
Wednesday was the 250th episode of "AEW Dynamite," and Tony Khan stacked the card accordingly, most notably announcing the first-ever match between top stars Maxwell Jacob Friedman and Will Ospreay — a match most wrestling fans expected to be saved for a grand stage like Wembley Stadium. If it had been, however, it could hardly have been treated as a bigger event; MJF's and Ospreay's Wednesday night opener came just two seconds short of lasting a full hour and ended with a shocking International title change. It was an unmistakeable gamble from Khan, and it appears to have paid off in the ratings.
As first reported by Programming Insider, the July 17 "Dynamite" averaged 795,000 viewers, up 15% from last week's 691,000 and 24% from the trailing four weeks' average of 640,000. It was the highest average viewership "Dynamite" has enjoyed since April 10, and it also did a big number in the key 18-49 age demographic, up to 0.27 — its highest number since June 5 and the seventh-highest number on cable in the demographic for the day. Up against the Republican National Convention and coming off a recent stretch of barely beating or even occasionally losing to "WWE NXT" in the ratings, these numbers should be considered a win for Khan as he continues to negotiate a new TV deal with David Zaslav's Warner Bros. Discovery, though even this episode was significantly down from how "Dynamite" was performing at the same time last year.
In terms of quarter-hours, according to Wrestlenomics, while Wednesday's "Dynamite" technically followed its usual pattern of riding popular lead-in "The Big Bang Theory" to a strong QH1 and dropping off from there, the dip from QH1 to QH2 was only 42,000 viewers — significantly smaller than usual — and the hour-long opener actually picked up 12,000 viewers as it went on, with the finish of the match coming in the second-highest quarter for overall viewership and the highest quarter in the key demo. The numbers did drop steadily from there, with "Dynamite" losing 140,000 viewers between QH5 and QH8, bottoming out at 685,000 viewers during the seven-minute overrun.