Television viewership for professional wrestling remains a quagmire under Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel method.
To refresh, the traditional method of reporting television viewership under ‘panel only’ took Nielsen’s methodology of monitoring over 42,000 homes, known as ‘Nielsen homes’, and extracting those viewing patterns for a national average. The incorporation of Big Data last September took the existing model and added Smart TV data from approximately 45 million households, in theory, providing a more specific viewership reach.
The initial results saw professional wrestling programming take a significant hit on cable across the board. Wrestlenomics reported last November that SmackDown decreased by 14% in viewership and 20% in the 18-49 demographic under Big Data + Panel, Dynamite fell 9% in viewership and 20% in 18-49, and Collision declined by 6% in viewership and only 2% in 18-49.
A change occurred this past January with Nielsen updating its methodology, which mitigated the decreases among professional wrestling programming but didn’t completely override the downward shift from September 2025 onward.
Of late, the Wrestling Observer Newsletter has been receiving “panel only” figures to compare to the present numbers being reported for SmackDown (USA Network), Dynamite (TBS), and Collision (TNT) on cable.
The June 17 episode of Dynamite averaged 665,000 viewers and 0.12 in the 18-49 demographic, airing against World Cup coverage averaging 3,860,000 viewers and 1.36 in the demo. The “panel only” figures reported by Observer are 819,000 viewers and 0.18 in 18-49. The result is a 23% increase in viewership and 50% gain in 18-49 under the method we reported before September 2025.
The June 19 edition of Friday Night SmackDown averaged 1,191,000 viewers and 0.25 in 18-49 on the USA Network under Big Panel + Data. Under “panel only”, it jumped to 1,444,000 viewers (+21%) and 0.34 in 18-49 (+36%).
The taped episode of AEW Collision airing on June 20 averaged 350,000 viewers and 0.05 in 18-49 on TNT but increased to 493,000 viewers (+41%) and 0.08 (+60%) using “panel only” data.
The most important discrepancies are among the core demographic against which the networks sell ads. Regardless of frustrations under the new model, those are the accepted numbers by advertisers and show a dizzying decline compared to the prior model.
