Last week’s AEW Dynamite drew more viewers in key demo than WWE SmackDown on FS1

The ratings are in for the Friday Night SmackDown show that aired on December 18th.

The episode drew an average of 1.030 viewers on FOX Sports 1. The show did 0.30 in the 18-49 demographic. To compare, the October 23rd show on FS1 did 881,000 viewers with a 0.25 rating.

The final rating for the December 11th SmackDown on FOX did 2.206 million viewers. The show back in October 2019 did 888,000 viewers.

The show had to go up against a college football game between USC and Oregon on FOX that averaged 3.847 million viewers. Bryan Alvarez noted on Twitter that last week’s AEW Dynamite beat SmackDown in the key demo. AEW did the same to Raw last week as well. 

For those who want the comparison:

Smackdown: 1.030 million, 0.30 in 18-49
AEW: 806,000, 0.32 in 18-49

So Smackdown won in total viewers thanks to its older audience, but AEW won in all the 18-49 demos.

— Bryan Alvarez (@bryanalvarez) December 21, 2020

It should be noted that FOX is in more homes than FS1. Not only is FS1 on cable, but they are in far fewer homes even compared to the likes of ESPN. SmackDown was moved to FS1 last Friday because of the football game. Thus, the numbers should be up when they move to FOX this coming Friday.

This episode was the go-home show of the blue brand for the TLC pay-per-view event.