Dave Meltzer Assesses AEW's Viewership, Ratings Performance

AEW CEO Tony Khan has had a lot to celebrate over the past few days. The August 14 episode of "AEW Dynamite" ranked first out of all cable TV shows for the evening, the company announced All In Texas for July 2025, and at the time of writing, AEW is just over a week away from putting nearly 50,000 people in Wembley Stadium for this year's edition of All In. Despite this, the company has struggled over the past few years when it comes to live attendance, as well TV ratings. Khan might have been celebrating the August 14 show placing first, but the average overall viewership for "Dynamite" was just over 700,000, which is down almost 25% from the same week 12 months earlier, and over half since "Dynamite's" debut in 2019.

Dave Meltzer touched on AEW's problems in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Meltzer believes the announcement of All In Texas, as well as the pending announcements of AEW's debut in Australia and presumably the new media rights deal that has been talked about all year, is simply a way to detract people from the company's biggest problem: they're not popular with teenagers anymore.

Meltzer sees the weekly 18-34 demo number decreasing as a sign that AEW is losing the audience they had a vice-like grip on a few years ago, and that even if the 35-49 demo remains steady, the 18-34 demo gradually getting smaller will hurt live attendance figures and TV ratings. That age range will always be looking for the next new thing to appear, making AEW less appealing in the process. Meltzer concluded by saying that WWE being so popular is also a factor, as they show no signs of slowing down when it comes to their current product.