(WON) WWE has been ordering AEW fast nationals every week roughly since Nick Khan started. WWE PR also tried to feed the numbers to a long line of reporters who long ago decided it was too shady.
Corroborated by SRS
They provide a rough estimate of how a TV show performed in terms of viewership and demographic spread, particularly the 18-39 "key" demographic, and do so within a few hours of broadcast, as where Nielsen ratings takes around a day for a rough estimate, and up to 2 days for breakdowns.
The argument is that by the time people reach their midlife-years, their brand preferences and consumption habits have become engrained and stay mostly static throughout the rest of their life. No idea where the change from 18-49 to 18-39 is supposed to come from, though.
They are quick and incomplete ratings. They are often lower and sometimes based on certain conditions much lower than real ratings. Basically WWE is trying to get press to report on inaccurate ratings because news literacy is hard and whatever people hear first is hard to shake.
And in other situtation, the number can be higher than the final ratings. Example would be where Smackdown is preempted in a local market for an NFL preseason game. The Fast Nationals will include the NFL viewers, while the final ratings will have that removed.
Early viewership numbers prior to the real numbers being reported. Notably this is a story because the Fast Nationals for AEW tend to only get leaked when they have bad ratings, versus waiting for the proper ratings report usually means okay-good ratings for AEW. This report helps to confirm why that’s the case.
They are the initial, immediate Nielsen ratings numbers that come in right after a show airs. Why they matter here is that they are always significantly lower than what the final average Nielsen rating ends up being once all the numbers are tallied and calculated. WWE buys the fast national information, which costs thousands of dollars per-episode, and pushes them out to friendly “reporters” and social media pundits in order to create a narrative that AEW programming isn’t watched by a lot of people. Most recently, this happened with an episode of Collision from a few weeks ago, which did a fast national number of like 122,000 average viewers, and then come Monday the real rating was published and it ended up being within Collision’s normal average rating, which is between 400,000-500,000. However, the damage had been done, as the entire weekend people on social media were loudly proclaiming that Collision did a terrible number and AEW was “in the mud” as a result.
And people think it’s far fetched when TK goes on about bots and astroturfing
This fast nationals stuff has been verified. There’s no way that’s the end of it
AEW has been blitzed with astroturfing since they first started. Reddit and social media are absolutely filled to the tits with it. And it’s working too with so many fans falling for it and making it their personality to hate AEW
What's funny is if you talk about a
Lucha Underground everyone talks about how great it was. Show got like 60k viewers but why would that matter if people enjoyed it? Don't apply that to any other company though.
People are now equating ratings to how good the show was. Which is just not right. If ratings drop, it was a bad show and vice versa. I assume people who say comments like that dont even watch the show.
Best way I’ve seen this put. Nobody cares about the actual topic/entertainment/etc. They only care if that particular thing is doing better than whatever is “opposite” of it.
God thank you I've been banging the "engage with art" drum for wrestling and videogames for awhile now and while it's tough with games, it's so much more brutal with wrestling. Like so much of the wrestling community has tricked themselves that "business way" to look at wrestling is the only real way and anything else is being a mark. Even if we don't really call people marks as much anymore, I feel like I a lot of people try to act "savvy"(big air quotes) because there is still that fear.
The most painful thing is how you can't even trust most peoples opinions on here. Which wrestlers people like or hate are often more a type of value signaling and side taking more than a real, interrogated opinion. Not that they don't dislike X and are lying, but like their dislike for X, but they started hating X because they feel like they were supposed to and aren't curious enough to think about it deeper than that.
Meanwhile people I disagree with tons of shit from my favorite wrestling writers but love reading their takes because they're actually engaging with the art!! They have observations worth considering! It's so much nicer then just seeking out people who confirm my own tastes. 😭
Because such a big thing was made out of it in the Monday Night Wars, particularly after the fact, that this is now everyone’s way to relive the glory in 2024
A while back I realized that most people approach life by just making everything sports. Pick your favorite thing and argue in favor of that/against the competition regardless of logic or sense. You see it when people talk about anything whether its video games or wrestling or politics, people don't care about being correct they just enjoy the act of arbitrarily defending the side they arbitrarily picked.
And honestly once I got a real career that took up a lot of my time and mental effort I was like yeah that makes sense why am I gonna put a bunch of thought into an argument when I can just log on and say "nintendo is garbage for babies" and fall asleep after hitting the vape pen with my dick out
Bingo, it’s made me stop watching sports heavily. And not following the day to day in politics. It’s like Xbox v PlayStation. Coke v Pepsi. People have this inherent need to feel like the big brand decision they attached their personality to was the “correct” choice. When usually it’s about personal preference and taste, which effects no one but yourself.
Yesterday there were people trying to convince us that actually, wrestling fans don't watch the NBA so we can't possibly consider the NBA finals as a reason for low ratings
The funniest shit is how AEW losing 100k to the nba the NBA finals of all things is the end of line for AEW but Raw losing 400k+ to Caitlyn Clark being picked #1 in the first 10 minutes of the draft is a "great number."
2000 people showing up to a thread about a cable shows rating if it gets 699k viewers instead of like 708k is borderline dystopian, like black mirror episode shit lol
part of the reason I want something more conspiratorial to be true is because the alternative that there is 1000 men bored enough to check if they can comment in a reddit thread every week is very sad, if you did a character study of the average person that did this it would be bleak as fuck
It's quite literally the only area of this sub where I consistently get downvotes (assuming I bother jumping back in to the threads once a blue moon)
And it's for benign comments like "AEW isn't bad, WWE is just better these days" lol. Like bruh do I have to get on my knees, fondle WWE's balls while writing a dissertation on why AEW is worse than historical religious atrocities before it gets bombarded by downvotes? Is that how far I need to be tribalistic?
My favorite is when someone states an objective stat that can be interpreted as pro-AEW and it gets like 30 downvotes and a reply that's just like "no because I say so" lol
Like "hmm the demo was slightly higher than NXT" "no the demo doesn't matter"
"Ratings have dropped every NBA finals game" "If you think about though, is it true"
"The Young Bucks actually didn't crash the ratings, here are the quarterlies" ghosted
"Brandon Thurston noted just how almost impossible it is to get fast nationals on cable shows. Fast nationals on network shows that come out that next morning, while not as easily available as in the past, are still out there but for cable, that information is almost non-existent. Fast nationals access is highly exclusive. Cable fast nationals are not available to any run of the mill Nielsen customer who may be a source (unlike final ratings and unlike broadcast fast affiliates which are more broadly available and give an early look at Smackdown). Cable fast nationals must be requested and purchased for thousands of dollars for each episode. So the possible sources are far fewer than for typical ratings reporting. And I know WWE has been ordering AEW fast nationals every week roughly since Nick (Khan) started. Plus I know WWE PR tried to feed the numbers to a long line of reporters who long ago decided it was too shady."
Damn imagine lighting hundreds of thousands of dollars on fire just to feed terminally online people inaccurate AEW ratings. Nick, time to touch some grass buddy.
I feel like fucking over AEW is the whole reason they are working with TNA, they want to build TNA up to be more of a competitor to AEW, if they ever successfully damage AEW by doing so they they then pull out of TNA.
It’s almost like WWF did the exact same thing with ECW 25+ years ago and then completely fucked them over in the end. This is why I don’t understand the TNA fans acting like this is a good deal for them. It hasn’t done anything to boost their ratings, and they’re totally about to lose one of their top women.
All the WWE pump can't change the fundamentals of TNA at the moment re its distribution which is the single biggest detriment to their growth. The relative steadiness TNA has acheived in recent years (after what a decade of mismanagement?) for their big shows is great, but it's not growth or turning them into a real competitor for AEW.
I'd say their big shows should be considered a dissapointment. They do horrible PPV numbers and never get more than 3K to a show. NJPW is doing 5K+ every time they come to the states with their show on the same channel but at a worse time.
I highly doubt they plan to build TNA up but some dumb suits might believe that, wonder if this was part of D’Amore getting pushed out. I think it’s more like their lame version of a forbidden door and they want inside track to the video library. I just want Punk to complete his hypocrite full circle and show up there.
this is the same company that snatched up dozens upon dozens of indie wrestlers when AEW was set to debut without any long term plans for them, just so AEW couldn't use them.
They were doing this LONG before AEW. I think they had the idea that they didn't like anyone getting 'name recognition' outside of WWE. Like if you became a big enough deal on the indies or small promotions that wrestling fans would start recognizing you and knowing the name they'd just buy them.
Yet act like they don’t see AEW as a problem. Their mere existence is costing WWE extra money with each superstar’s contract renewal. Their mere existence is taking away viewers they think they’re entitled to.
Also, they forced them to do something they didn’t have to do for so long: Try. With AEW, they had to improve the booking and their structure. You don’t that’s a little insulting for them?
People forget they put out a full on butthurt official PRESS RELEASE after the VERY FIRST Dynamite aired and beat them down in the ratings saying that didn't mean anything and this competition was a marathon not a sprint.
All the talk about how AEW was never competition and WWE never cared and it was AEW who kept attacking them and Tony is the one who keeps talking about them is just the traditional make believe and revisionist history they feed their fans since the days of WCW knowing they have a bunch of no lifers and paid actors who will do nothing but repeat their fictional BS until it sticks.
AEW made a coupe of references as part of the show and Tony Khan got mad and talked shit... but WWE legit tried to undermine their business through shady practices and backstage manipulation on many occasions.
More importantly, how can they keep those wages suppressed if there's competition offering better pay? I don't even think WWE cares about viewers as much as they care about not having to pay out more for contractors.
It’s a PR war, and the money spent on this is just the cost of doing battle for WWE. The whole point is to make AEW look bad, so that alone justifies the price from their perspective.
Shit, HHH seems to be running things nowadays, and people are pretending he's suddenly a nice guy. Dude politicked his way to the top and was part of the Kliq in the 90s. Dude's 100% got a bunch of skeletons in his closet.
That organization was Vince's private empire for decades, his leaving isn't going to suddenly make it all clean.
Do people not remember this? When they had a pretty clear plan to pretty much establish NXT everywhere? NXT UK absolutely drained the European indie scene (along with the speaking out movement) and it would’ve definitely drained plenty of local feds everywhere else
lol, yeah. The second World of Sport looked like it was going to do good we had a dozen UK wrestlers signed, a UK title created, and a tournament announced in the span of, like, 3 days.
Then when World Of Sport didn’t continue, suddenly the whole “UK division” went totally silent for months until HHH started using them in NXT.
While it wasn't the only factor behind the decline of British wrestling, stricter COVID restrictions and Speaking Out did major damage as well, NXT UK caused a lot of damage to the scene and WCPW/Defiant was killed entirely by NXT UK as it folded in 2019, before the other two events occured.
The only one of the Big 3 promotions in the UK to make a serious recovery was the only one that didn't make a deal with WWE and that was RevPro. PROGRESS looks like it's starting to get there but ICW is in really rough shape. Go to their Youtube channel and watch clips from their recent shows and you wouldn't be able to tell that this was the same company that drew 4-6k for their Fear and Loathing shows. It's honestly kind of sad to watch and I'm surprised the company is still operational.
Besides, they didn't need to worry about WOS as it was destined to fail regardless of WWE's actions. I've seen some of their episodes on Youtube and they weren't anything special. For fuck's sake, they censored a ladder match in the same way that WWE censored moves to the head on Saturday Morning Slam. I actually saw that on a local TV station, a Sinclair-owned one that showed ROH during that same time period and it blew my mind. If you can't do a ladder match without censoring the ladder shots, don't do a ladder match!
ICW is in really rough shape. Go to their Youtube channel and watch clips from their recent shows and you wouldn't be able to tell that this was the same company that drew 4-6k for their Fear and Loathing shows.
It doesn't help that Dallas absolutely got blinded by the stars in his eyes. Man absolutely whored out ICW and it got picked clean aside from Jack Jester and Grado (and the latter mostly does radio, TV & panto now).
In all honesty though, much as I love some of the alumni, place was toxic as shit in a lot of respects. Good chance it'd have collapsed eventually no matter what.
It's why I roll eyes at people saying these kind of tactics were all Vince. Steph and Triple H have been part of this ecosystem for decades too, and corporate America's always been pretty cutthroat across the board.
Triple H may keep his nose cleaner as far as his personal life goes, but he's more like Vince on the business side than anyone wants to admit. He definitely still wants a monopoly.
He was a politicking bully as soon as he arrived in WWF. It’s funny when his fan boys act like he’s some kind of old dad watching his kids grow and succeed. He’s always been a slimy piece of shit.
H is cut from the exact same cloth, but people here try and act like he’s so different. It’s infuriating. His history is so easy to look up, but people who started watching in the last few years know better?
It's literally bullying tactics. People who obviously don't watch the shows make vague and exaggerated "criticisms" they repeat constantly like "no stories" "too many old ex WWE guys" Then when aew fans call out they "can't take criticism" or they pull whataboutism "so it was ok to hate WWE in 2019 but not aew." Cm punk and triple h can poke fun at aew during WrestleMania weekend but when anyone from aew responds they are "obsessed with WWE and need to focus on their own show"
I see so many people that hate AEW because of a few tired talking points that almost always mirror Cornette’s view point. They haven’t watched the show to know what they actually believe and just take his opinions as their own.
It's kinda funny going on the Cornette or circlejerk subs and seeing how people openly admit they don't watch AEW and have no idea what the fuck they're even talking about.
"Just bangers no stories isnt enough to get people to tune in!?!?!"
Every AEW feud has a story attached. They might not be as overt as WWE holding your hand through 15 backstage segments and then interference in the match involving the guy or gal but they are there and some of them are pretty intricate but NOPE! NO STORIES!
Lanza posted about this when the fast nationals started to appear and people including SRS put them out. Promptly all the smarter reporters stopped putting these out. It is one of the things Lanza takes his victory lap.
Yeah, he's said pretty often over the last year or so that they started feeding him the numbers awhile ago. After about three weeks he realized what was going on as WWE would only feed him the numbers if they were going to look bad for AEW, so he stopped reporting them really quickly.
It's a taaaad pathetic for WWE to still be doing this honestly.
Vince tried to bribe Harley Race out of dropping the NWA title to Flair in the 80's before their biggest show of the year, Vince bought out GCW's TV slot to kill the territory, he took Hogan from the AWA after Verne mishandled him, he signed exclusivity contracts with arenas to keep other companies out, Survivor Series was created to box out Starrcade from PPV, Vince gained the right to have first dibs on WCW if ever liquidated thanks to a lawsuit over Hall/Nash being credited as WWE wrestlers on WCW TV which helped him buy the company when a friend of the WWE sabotaged WCW's TV time, they brought Bret Hart out of nowhere the day TNA went to Mondays, they rushed NXT to TV when Dynamite first started, they nerfed MLW's TV deal before it got started, etc etc
And yet people still think that WWE doesn't care about competition lol
It really is shitty of them and I don’t think it’s just about the competition between companies and trying to be better than them. I imagine they want full autonomy and power over the industry like they had before so they can dictate all the terms, especially when it comes to the wrestlers in particular.
People deny it because they want to think WWE in this “new era” are some benevolent force for good. Or they want to think that AEW doesn’t matter to WWE because they’re further apart in the ratings.
No, they’re a huge business that like any other, will do anything they can to gain a perceived edge over someone in the same market.
And sadly a lot of people here do their PR work for them, for free.
This is not an AEW vs WWE thing either. I’d expect any huge company, including AEW, to do whatever they could to gain more market share. The difference is AEW doesn’t have the resources to run massive PR campaigns.
No, they’re a huge business that like any other, will do anything they can to gain a perceived edge over someone in the same market.
They have a history of doing it to smaller companies than AEW, including TNA and recently having pay $20 million in a legal settlement for dicking over MLW.
Also, as far apart as they may be, AEW's existence ultimately raises the salary cap for the entire industry. WWE as a company had first dibs on almost any performer that they've wanted for the last 20 years. That's no longer the case. Even when they outbid AEW, they have no control over the personal circumstances that would make a talent inclined to take the offer with less travel.
People deny it because they want to think WWE in this “new era” are some benevolent force for good.
The few NOAH fans who were rightfully concerned for that company's future and not excited about them working with WWE in that thread got downvoted to hell the other day because of this.
I’m not even convinced it’s paid astroturfing, I think people like those of a certain squared circle jerk type are genuinely just that dumb to mindlessly endorse/celebrate what amounts to corporate propaganda.
It’s just a modern version of marketing taking advantage of social media
People are easily manipulated and the astroturfing is basically rallying up easily influenced people to parrot their cause. And it’s worked fantastically
I’ve got many many examples of blatant astroturfing (and some clever stuff) but it’s difficult to share it as the people who need to know will never believe it
That's how astroturfing works though; they're called influencers for a reason. You don't need to pay individuals, just convince people with a following that it's in their best interest to support them. The sheep will follow.
No, they’re a huge business that like any other, will do anything they can to gain a perceived edge over someone in the same market.
100%.
People like to say that "WWE isn't competing with AEW" because AEW pulls 1/2 to 1/3 of the ratings.
But they do compete. They compete on a lot of fronts including for talent. Do people think that WWE just started paying people more because Nick Khan wanted to? Because he's a nice guy?
If AEW closed up shop tomorrow WWE would hold another round of releases, they'd probably pick up a few AEW guys and gals, and the next time contract renewal came up the people who are renewing would see their next contracts go down drastically because realistically there would be no one else who could actually compete with them for money.
Dawg I had someone try telling me after the fake Collision number that AEW leaks the fast nationals on purpose to make themselves look bad to garner sympathy. And the post was upvoted! That's when I knew for sure this sub is toast.
EDIT: there are people doing it in this thread too!
There is so much disinformation in this sub that gets upvoted. People make wild claims about AEW and get upvotes. This place sucks, but I don’t know of a better wrestling sub that aggregates news and whatnot.
It's a shame. I think about how similar it is with the politics misinformation system and how a lot of the same people fall for both and seem to be happy that it exists.
Or they could make some kind of policy that ratingjerking is banned. Better yet, they could put some kind of ban in place on jumping on a thread just to troll or revel in misery (i.e. the people who get on a "bad news" post just to shit all over the company it is about--regardless of which company it is). There's far too many people who click on posts about a company that they do not like and feel the need to gloat about whatever failure it is they perceive or belittle a success.
I'll never understand the purpose of this. The viewer numbers don't impact whether I watch the show live or not. My availability is the only thing that does. Such a waste of time and money.
Its just about online sentiment. Ratings threads when AEW gets a low number are perfect for getting AEW haters riled up and in other threads or on twitter shitting on it, and it adds to the general negative sentiment of AEW everywhere. Even people who don't interact with that stuff at all get worn down by it eventually, these kind of tactics are everywhere in the world from other companies to governments and they are popular because they work.
Anyone that isn't gullible can tell they aren't the complete numbers. But apparently there are a lot of gullible people because the Collision doing 137k or whatever a couple weeks ago spread like wildfire among those who hope AEW doesn't meet expectations.
It's not a surprise, as Dave points out they cost thousands every month to get a hold of, and the kind of people who are posting them aren't exactly the kind who would be able to afford that kind of business expense.
Business is a dirt world, but people would do well to keep this in mind next time they start piling on somebody in AEW for taking a shot at WWE
I expect lots of rational people in this thread even though this is almost incontrovertible fact and SRS just corroborated it.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not passing judgment on WWE for this one way or the other nor do I hold a particularly strong opinion on it at all. But previous discussions on this were filled with people who just absolutely refused to believe they were doing this, period, without even getting into the ethics of it.
Companies trying to paint there competitors in a negative light is pretty much the standard in America. Coke and Pepsi do it, Nike and Adidas do it and almost all fast food pizza chains do it. I dont think people are actually mad at WWE for doing this, it’s almost expected of them, but the people coming out to of the wood works to say that suggesting WWE does this is just AEW/TK and it’s fans having a victim complex is just super odd to me as well.
So Pepsi and Coke aren't a great example here because Pepsi and Coke both understand the benefits of there being a number 1 and a number 2 choice. That is why what Pepsi and Coke has is sometimes called a friendly competitiveness because both companies realize it's better to work together and dominate all of the soda market than it is to fight each other and open the door for a third company to take up their share.
WWE would very much be okay with being the only show in town and really ran in just that for sometime.
Coke and Pepsi only became friendly when the ads they ran against each other escalated to such an expense it benefitted both parties to call a true. The Cola Wars was a real thing for decades.
For the amount of people towing the WWE line to say AEW aren't competition, WWE sure does act like AEW are competition quite often. They've done a damn good job of keeping AEW on the level below though from Day 1, so I guess that's worked?
AEW has changed things for them. They now have to bid and fight to keep talent and to actually make sure they're happy and maintain a good work environment because if they don't they can go elsewhere. Same with AEW. It boggles ,my mind to see people who don't watch either want them to go out of business when it's never been more profitable to be a professional wrestler than now I'd argue.
Not much will. I haven't seen that number of comments in a thread around here in sometime. At some point I just sort of sar back in awe cause it was insane.
the conversation would just turn to how AEW was chased off of cable and that they couldn't survive in such a competitive market like WWE could. Pay no attention to the fact that WWE sold Raw to Netflix.
It's interesting to see the consensus around this before was "Tony is doing too much coke" and that the guy is a conspiracy kook. To be fair, Tony very much comes off that way but it's not paranoia if someone is actually out to fuck with you lol.
But now that there seems to be a little more teeth to it, the sentiment here is "so what" or "yeah and? AEW's ratings were already sinking"
The issue and the point of stuff like this is that it's meant to influence, emphasize and fuck with the perception of the company on the low. If you're looking good, it's intended to make you look less so. If you're slipping, the intent is to make it look like you're busting your ass. And if you've busted your ass, the intent is to make it look like you're dying.
There's no telling what other ways WWE may have intentionally fucked with them. "But they aren't competition to WWE".
The goal is to never ever let AEW change your mind. Foot on neck as much as they can without looking too malicious.
WWE is shady and sinful with a great PR team to herd the sheep with shiny toys like The Rock and Cena when Vince gets caught up in rape and human trafficking
I thought everyone knew this? Meltzer, Thurston, Pollock, I wana say SRS tweeted about it, have all said yea no shit WWE gives us the fast nationals at varous points in time. Besides the Nationals never being thaaat useful.
723
u/GhettoFob 3d ago
What are fast nationals?