AEW Dynamite Ratings Up Big Over Recent Weeks For Winter Is Coming 2022

After several weeks in a row of sliding Nielsen ratings, both in terms of the key adults 18-49 demographic and overall viewership, "AEW Dynamite" rebounded big with the December 14 episode, which was branded as the third annual "Winter is Coming" episode.

Thanks presumably to a strong main event in MJF's first AEW World Championship defense (against Ricky Starks) as well as the first two editions of "Winter is Coming" being positioned well above the usual specially branded episodes of "Dynamite," the show averaged 950,000 viewers overall in the main P2+ demographic, and approximately 428,000 in the key adults 18 to 49 demographic according to Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics.

The latter figure was good enough for a 0.33 rating in the key P18-49 demo. It's the highest for the show since October 5. Wednesday night's viewership was the highest P2+ average since the show three weeks later on October 26. Compared to last week's show, there was an increase of 13 percent across both metrics. And according to ShowBuzzDaily, "Winter is Coming" came in third place among cable originals for the day in the key demo.

Compared to the median of the last four weeks, the numbers for Wednesday's "Dynamite" were up in every demographic. The biggest jump, most interestingly, came in women aged 18-34, with 51,000 viewers, an increase of a whopping 31 percent over the four-week median. Men 18-49 were next best, with a 19 percent increase to 300,000 viewers, while women 18-49 (up 14 percent to 128,000), adults 18-34 (up 15 percent to 169,000), men 18-34 (up 15 percent to 117,000), men 35-49 (up 14 percent to 183,000), women 35-49 (up 13 percent to 76,000), and all viewers outside of 18-49 (up 14 percent to 522,000) all saw increases in the same range. Only the rating for adults 35-49 (up eight percent to 259,000) was outside of that range in the growth over the median. Meanwhile, the audience's median age was just over 50 years old, identical to the four-week median.

Among cable originals for Wednesday, only the pair of NBA games on ESPN beat "Dynamite," with "Winter is Coming" outranking the NBA shoulder programming, longtime rival "The Challenge" on MTV, "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City," and the usual cable news programming, among other shows.