Methodology: The listings below are the result of our daily data collections of the “Top Sellers” pages for each merchandise shop.
Reverse rank values were counted for any item that appeared in the top 50 on a given day. An item that was #1 received 50 points for that day. An item that was #2 received 49 points, and so on.
This article was also published for Wrestlenomics subscribers. Signup now on Patreon or Substack to unlock access to paywalled and ad-free reporting and analysis on the business of pro wrestling.
Update: AEW announced on March 5, 2025 that Amazon Prime Video will begin offering AEW PPVs for purchase, confirming this report.
Amazon Prime Video will likely be added to the list of digital carriers selling AEW pay-per-view this year, Wrestlenomics has learned. This hasn’t been confirmed by AEW or Prime Video, both of which we reached out to but have yet to respond.
It’s expected AEW pay-per-views will be available for purchase on Prime, like they are on existing digital carriers. Do not expect PPVs to be included in Prime’s monthly membership.
It’s unknown if this will go into effect in time for AEW’s next PPV event, Revolution, on March 9. When it goes into effect, users are expected to be able to purchase the PPV in the U.S., Canada, and U.K., we were informed.
Users likely won’t need to be paying Prime members to buy the PPV, similar to how users can pay to rent or buy movie titles on Prime regardless of whether they are Prime members.
Digital carriers currently listed on AEW’s official website for Revolution are Triller, PPV.com, and YouTube, which offer the event in the U.S., Canada, and certain international markets, as they have for prior events.
As part of the AEW-WBD media deal renewal, the companies announced last October that Max will also become a PPV distributor sometime in 2025, at a discounted price point compared to other carriers.
Streaming a live PPV isn’t unprecedented for Prime. The platform has offered Premier Boxing Champions events, including one upcoming on February 1.
Brandon Thurston has written about wrestling business since 2015. He operates and owns Wrestlenomics.
Where the premiere of WWE Monday Night Raw on Netflix place for the week of January 6 through January 12, 2025.
Where Raw ranked for week 2 on Netflix.
Netflix’s TUDUM (I’ve yet to figure out what, if anything that stands for — UPDATE: Readers have alerted me “Tudum” is that sound the Netflix logo makes when you turn on the app) weekly rankings of the most-watched content on the platform were released on Monday afternoon. It shows Raw on Netflix ranked #4 for the second week in a row.
Across the seven-day period from Monday, January 13 to Sunday, January 19, the January 13 episode of Raw had 3,700,000 “views”, which is simply the total number of hours viewed (8,200,000) divided by the program’s duration. As I’ve noted before, this is essentially an average minute audience (AMA) measurement, similar to the Nielsen method that we’re familiar with. It’s important to remember this is a global measurement, not a U.S.-only measurement that we’re used to with Nielsen. But globally, this is similar to saying over 7 days (similar to a DVR+7 window), the show was watched by 3.7 million viewers.
That’s down significantly from the premiere, as expected. Netflix showed in the same chart in the prior week that the first episode of Raw on the platform drew 5.9 million views globally, also ranking #4 that week. Therefore, week 2 was down 37% from the premiere.
How does that compare to other memorable premieres of wrestling programs? For comparison, albeit using Nielsen U.S. data only, the second episode of Smackdown on Fox in 2019 declined 26% from week 1 to week 2 (3,888,000 viewers to 2,877,000). The second episode of Dynamite on TNT, also in 2019, declined from 28% from week 1 to week 2. In both of those cases, though, it seems to take until about week 3 for these programs to settle into their normal range.
Focusing only on U.S. viewership, live viewing of Raw was likely impacted to some extent in week 3, this past Monday, due to competition from the College Football National Championship game. But we’ll see if that’s made up for through delayed viewing or is just less significant in a global measurement, as there’s much less interest in college football outside the U.S.
Netflix ranked #4 in both week 1 and week 2 globally. In the U.S., Raw actually ranked better in the second week, at #4, up from #5. However, I believe viewership was also significantly down in the U.S. for the second episode. Netflix doesn’t include any viewership data beyond the ranking for the U.S. or any region, only for global viewership.
If Netflix’s press release announcing data for the week 1 viewership is any indication, it suggests that 70% of live viewing was in the U.S., though, one would think that majority is significantly diminished as the week goes on and viewers from around the world in different time zones watch the program.
As reported at the time, according to Netflix’s third-party for measuring U.S. viewership, the premiere averaged 2.6 million accounts live+same-day, which is comparable to Nielsen’s live+same-day measurement of households. Throughout 2024, Raw on the USA Network averaged 1.2 million households, meaning the premiere was watched by about double the audience of a typical Raw last year.
On Tuesday evening’s Netflix earnings call, co-CEO Ted Sarandos indicated his happiness with viewership of the Raw debut and gave some limited insight on international viewership.
“Our first week [with Raw], we drew about 5 million views, which is about two times the audience that Monday Night Raw was getting in linear television, pretty consistent with how we modeled it, how we’d hope to build the audience for the league,” Sarandos said. “We also saw that the non-live viewing… grew by 25%, mostly outside of the U.S. time zones.”
He also noted U.K., Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Brazil were “big markets” for watching WWE on Netflix so far.
Brazil and Mexico stand out somewhat among that group as markets we don’t usually consider to be leading international markets for WWE.
Brandon Thurston has written about wrestling business since 2015. He operates and owns Wrestlenomics.
AEW TV ratings, attendance, and pay-per-view trends for the fourth quarter of 2024.
To accompany the new episode of Josh Nason’s Punch-Out with Brandon Thurston discussing the AEW’s last three months of 2024, which is free for everyone to listen to here:
This article was also published for Wrestlenomics subscribers. Signup now on Patreon or Substack to unlock access to paywalled and ad-free reporting and analysis on the business of pro wrestling.
I cross-referenced WWE and AEW’s official website roster pages, then matched (via a convoluted automated string-matching process) each wrestler to their Cagematch.net profile, then ran a check on the last time that wrestler had a match for their given promotion. This is the result.
Obviously there are a variety of reasons why a wrestler may be inactive — including but not limited to injuries or just being a “healthy scratch — which I didn’t try to parse here.
There are many cases where a wrestler has been active outside of their given company. The count of matches found in the Cagematch.net database for promotions other than WWE or AEW/ROH is shown in parentheses.
45 of 182 (25%) wrestlers haven’t had a match for the company in 45 days or more.
46 of 143 (32%) wrestlers haven’t had a match for either AEW or ROH in 45 days or more.
This article was also published for Wrestlenomics subscribers. Signup now on Patreon or Substack to unlock access to paywalled and ad-free reporting and analysis on the business of pro wrestling.
WWE and TNA announced a multi-year partnership on Thursday, though it’s unclear what this entails other than a formalization of the talent exchange that has been happening for many months.
The companies announced NXT and TNA talent will continue appearing on each other’s programming. Notably, as it has been all along, the announcement focuses on TNA interacting with NXT, not WWE’s main roster.
Analysis: The partnership is another indicator of WWE’s post-Vince McMahon approach to other wrestling companies and talent development.
I believe WWE is partly motivated by mitigating antitrust risk, which is probably of serious concern to TKO, given the settlement in late 2023 of MLW’s antitrust lawsuit against WWE, and UFC’s antitrust lawsuits. By showing WWE is open to working with other players in the wrestling industry which it doesn’t control, WWE can appear less monopolistic in the eyes of regulators and reduce the viability of another antitrust lawsuit like MLW’s.
TNA is the #3 wrestling company in the U.S. and makes a useful partner — small enough to be less of a threat than AEW, but significant enough to provide WWE with plenty of value at least when it comes to talent exchanges.
TNA, as well as WWE’s for-now less formal relationship with NOAH in Japan, provide developing or barely-used talent a much-needed opportunity to get wrestling experience outside of WWE. More than 12 years into the existence of the Performance Center and WWE has struggled to produce valuable stars who had little or no prior wrestling experience before coming to WWE. Whether that’s because of a closed-minded philosophy within WWE about the craft or something more systemic to the PC, allowing developing wrestlers to work in a variety of settings and styles is a strategy with a proven track record throughout the entire history of professional wrestling.
For TNA, the partnership elevates its profile, at least in the short-term. TNA should be mindful of the lessons of the 1980s when the WWF established partnerships with various territories before expanding outside the Northeast, and, more recently, the lessons that can be taken from WWE’s relationships with UK indies like Progress and ICW, which have seen better days, not entirely but partly due to WWE draining those scenes of talent. One can easily imagine a scenario in which TNA talent, like perhaps Joe Hendry and Jordynne Grace soon, basically have a trial run in WWE. The wealthier, more prestigious company gets to see which talent fits best with their audience and staff and might gradually drain TNA of its most valuable wrestlers. To an extent, of course, WWE always had an ability to attract TNA’s best talent, but this relationship allows WWE to do so with more confidence about who they’re investing in. Whereas if there’s any flow of talent leaving WWE to join TNA, it will most likely be because WWE has less of a desire to retain them.
Whether this relationship is more than a talent exchange remains to be seen. WWE’s connections could help TNA secure better media deals. If it’s feasible for TNA to tape its programming at the Performance Center in Orlando, that could prove to be a significant cost savings for TNA. For now, though, TNA probably struggles to get a better deal than the one with AXS TV, which its parent company Anthem acquired mainly for the purpose of airing TNA. AXS is still in just around half of cable households, which means it’s in just a quarter to a third of all U.S. households. AXS is no longer covered by Nielsen, but the latest TV viewership numbers we knew for TNA were still just under 100,000 viewers, even during periods where TNA and NXT talent were crossing over.
It’s notable, too, that Endeavor, which has controlling ownership of TKO, has already been working with TNA as the vendor for the TNA+ streaming service. Perhaps the relationship could bring Endeavor closer to helping TNA shop its rights, if TNA doesn’t work with another talent agency like CAA.
TNA’s new deal in Canada with Sportsnet, WWE’s former home, is a step up from Anthem’s Fight Network. The premiere delivered 36,000 viewers in Canada on January 2, then 19,000 on January 9, according to POST Wrestling. For a comparison point, though, NXT averaged multiple times either of TNA’s figures on the same network, averaging about 77,000 viewers in December.
TNA was one of few non-WWE wrestling companies in the U.S. on the upswing in 2024. Its ability to draw crowds for peak events improved, even if its television viewership hasn’t. WrestleTix estimated TNA drew three crowds with over 1,000 tickets distributed in Las Vegas last year. Its ambitious Slammiversary show in July at the UBS Arena on Long Island is currently at an estimate of 1,662.
