AEW returned to the state of Texas for the January 28 episode of “AEW Dynamite,” with the corporate bringing a loaded show featuring three championship bouts. Kris Statlander retained the AEW Women’s World Championship against Thekla, FTR retained the AEW World Tag Team Championships against Mark Davis and Jake Doyle, and after retaining the AEW TNT Championship against El Clon, Mark Briscoe was confronted by a debuting Tommaso Ciampa. The corporate loaded up its flagship show within the hopes of bringing in a bigger audience, and that is exactly what happened.
Based on Wrestlenomics and The Programming Insider, the January 28 episode of “Dynamite” averaged a complete of 653,000 viewers, marking a 31% increase on the 498,000 viewers the January 21 episode averaged. This can be 35% above the trailing 4 week average of 484,000 viewers, and the very best average viewership AEW has gotten for either “Dynamite” or “AEW Collision” to date in 2026. On top of that, the January 28 show earned the very best average viewership of the Big Data + Panel era of calculating viewers which got here into play at the tip of September 2025, beating out the previous record held by the Blood and Guts special on November 12, in addition to the September 24 viewership, which was the ultimate “Dynamite” to have viewers calculated under the old Nielsen method. As usual, all of those figures don’t include those that streamed the show on HBO MAX.
There was also an uptick within the 18-49 demographic because the show posted a 0.09 number, up 12% from the 0.08 number posted seven days earlier, and can be the very best 18-49 demo variety of the yr for AEW. Nevertheless, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer noted that the actual surprise was the 50-54 demographic number which he called “ridiculous” based on how high it was. While Meltzer didn’t give a precise number, The Programming Insider did reveal that “Dynamite” placed fourth for the night within the prime time cable rankings within the male 25-54 demographic with a 0.23 number, ending just behind the NBA on ESPN, and two hours of FOX News coverage.