February 14, 2022 Observer Newsletter: January wrestling ratings, Joe Rogan controversies
Looking at the January numbers as well as growth from last year always has a lot of extenuating circumstances.
First off, direct comparisons are misleading because last year both AEW and NXT were head-to-head, and there were major outliers. If we do throw them in, we’ll get a real number, but a number useless to learn from, which is the goal here. The goal here isn’t to regurgitate stats for the sake of stats but to look at the true growth or decline of the promotions and how well they are getting their audiences to grow and also to become more than just viewers but to attend live events.
And even though both AEW would look far better in growth figuring in the show against the insurrection where numbers were killed by news last year, or Raw would look much worse this year if we factored in the Legends show, this is more trying to factor in real gains and losses, not run a bunch of misleading numbers to give us a false impression.
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Dave Meltzer is the founder and lead writer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the weekly constant when it comes to news and reviews in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts for more than 40 years. Dave also co-hosts Wrestling Observer Radio with Bryan Alvarez and had had bylines for The National, Yahoo Sports, MMA Fighting and others.