src: https://www.f4wonline.com/aew-news/aew- ... but-351121
Friday night's "The First Dance" edition of AEW Rampage averaged 1.129 million viewers on TNT, up 52.6 percent from the previous week's premiere episode of the show.
The show took place at the United Center in Chicago and featured CM Punk's AEW debut. Punk's return to pro wrestling after seven years away kicked off the broadcast.
In the 18-49 demo, Rampage drew a 0.53 rating, up 71 percent from the debut episode. It's almost triple what Dynamite averaged in that category when it aired in the same time slot two months ago.
The demo number beat every single episode of Dynamite to date with the exception of the premiere episode in October 2019.
SmackDown, which aired on Fox directly before Rampage, averaged 2.102 million viewers, up 0.9 percent from the previous week.
In the 18-49 demo, SmackDown drew a 0.57 rating, which was down 1.7 percent from the previous week. Like the August 13 show, there were some preemptions due to preseason football.
Year-over-year, SmackDown was down 4.4 percent in overall viewership and down five percent in the 18-49 demo.
The chart below features the first two weeks of Rampage viewership and 18-49 demo numbers, along with the Dynamite ratings when it aired in the same time slot for comparison:
And here's a look at the last 11 weeks of SmackDown numbers as compared to the 10-week average in both categories:
