Tiffany’s Take: Do Ratings Really Matter?

Ratings, demos, and so much are on the table when Tiffany has Takes about the numerical side of who is watching wrestling!

So, if you’ve been following Wrestling Twitter the last few years, you’ve probably seen the obsession people have had with the ratings between WWE’s three shows that show on television vs AEW’s one TV show, along with the 18-34 or 18-49 demographic, and views on YouTube. It’s becoming borderline ridiculous, which begs the question: What are ratings, why do they matter, and, more importantly, why the fuck does everyone care so damn much?

In layman’s terms, ratings are the measurement of how many people are watching a TV show when the show first airs in a designated timeslot and that measurement tells networks how much interest there is in a program. It also helps advertisers figure out which shows will bring the most eyes to their ads, and those shows tend to get more sponsors, which brings in more money to fund the show. The demographic measurement is a breakdown of the viewers by age and sex with the 18-49 male demographic, that is, men between the ages of 18 and 49, being viewed as the most important. Yes, it’s stupid and sexist, but that’s what we’re working with here. The thinking seems to be that whomever has the most 18-49 year old men, is doing better than a show that didn’t grab as much of that demographic, but had more viewers overall, if that makes any sense. So, this is a pretty important measurement.

However, there are a LOT of problems with this measurement. One: the Neilson Ratings system, which was how all this stuff was measured, really only measured a small percentage of the population that watches TV and became obsolete with the advent of DVR and social media, though they have expanded their system to include these formats. Secondly, women watch these shows too, and are affected by advertising, so our viewership should be given equal measurement. Thirdly, the number of cable channels and variety of shows has exploded over the decades, which makes the pool of potential viewers for wrestling, which is already a niche sport, no matter how much they try to make it mainstream. 

YouTube and Social Media measuring is helpful since they are available to a wider range of people, and thus, in theory, you can get a better idea of how many people are actually viewing your product. However, not everyone uses social media platforms and YouTube’s view count is not one person, one view, every view counts, no matter how many times you watch and the count is kept permanently. This explains why Dean Ambrose/Jon Moxley’s Unaired Goodbye Segment from the night after WrestleMania 35 got more views than any other video WWE put on YouTube in 2019, despite Ambrose/Moxley leaving WWE in April. I will note that by the end of the week that video was put out, it had already garnered more views than the WrestleMania clips. 

The other big problem with focusing on ratings is that the ratings can be read in a million different ways. As a great man said ‘Figures lie and liars figure’. The numbers aren’t the whole story, they are part of the story. 

So, why do ratings matter? They matter because of the money that can be made that can help fund the shows we love and keep those shows air because advertisers aren’t going to put ads on shows that aren’t bringing in viewers. 

Why do fans care so much? That one’s a little harder to explain. I think it goes back to the Monday Night Wars where success or failure seemed to come down to the ratings instead of storylines and wrestling. It should be said, that ratings didn’t seem to be a determining factor in the destruction of WCW, that had more to do with the backstage machinations at Turner than it did with WCW, though I can’t say WCW was making a good case for itself.

So, yes, ratings do matter, but they aren’t the only thing that matters. What matters are the other ways fan show that they support their favorite promotions: Go to shows, if they ever come back, buy the merchandise, buy the PPVs, and make your voice heard on social media. It’s not just about numbers, it’s about the fans who make up those numbers and that’s what’s going to matter in the end.