AEW and WWE ratings: A dramatic drop as effects of Coronavirus hit hard

The latest round of figures from the Wednesday night battle for ratings have been revealed - and its a huge contrast for NXT and AEW.

Without any doubt, all professional wrestling companies are facing massive uncertainty as the world gets to grips with the global pandemic of coronavirus (COVID-19). Mass gatherings are either banned or strongly discouraged, meaning live events almost anywhere in the world are virtually impossible to stage.

With no events and no crowd in attendance, AEW and WWE are faced with the daunting prospect of having to produce engaging, entertaining content that now, more than ever, needs to hold the attention of the audience. WWE have managed to do that with relative success with recent episodes of RAW and Friday Night SmackDown but, for this week's NXT episode, the company abandoned the 'live' approach completely, instead opting to compile a programme of promo packages and interviews instead.

While it proved entertaining in its own right, it does not appear to have translated well in respect of viewing figures. For this week's show, NXT drew just 542,000 viewers according to the overnight averages from Showbuzz Daily - down significantly on the 697,000 viewers from last week. The figure is, perhaps understandably, the lowest for the show since its move to the USA Network.

AEW Dynamite appears to have taken full advantage of any casual viewers who opted out of watching NXT - their episode featuring the debut of Matt Hardy pulled a huge 932,000 - again a big difference compared to last week's 766,000.

All things considered, it may not come as much of a surprise and, again, against the backdrop of the global disaster that is developing as a result of COVID-19, ratings as a whole seem largely irrelevant. Nonetheless, its another impressive week in that respect for AEW who continue come out on top.