The Sept. 8th edition of Impact Wrestling, featuring the highly anticipated “Delete or Decay” segment, averaged 337,000 on Pop TV. This is down nearly 4% from last week’s show, and down 17.8% from the record-setting “Final Deletion” segment in July.
There are a couple of factors to consider here. Impact was up against the NFL season opener, featuring a Super Bowl 50 rematch between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers that did 25.2 million viewers on NBC. That in itself is not going to be an easy obstacle to overcome. There aren’t any recent hard metrics for comparison either, as Impact was on Wednesday nights in 2014 on Spike TV and 2015 on Destination America for the NFL opener.
The last time TNA went head-to-head with the NFL was back in 2013, and Impact actually rose over 5% against an opener that did 25+ million. This was also in a time when Impact was doing 1.3 million viewers on a much bigger network, and had a completely different roster with Hulk Hogan, AJ Styles, Bully Ray and many of the guys like Bobby Roode, Austin Aries and Samoa Joe who are now in NXT.
It’s worth noting that Impact also had a significant head start this year, as the Broncos/Panthers game didn’t even kick off until 8:41 PM EST, nearly halfway through the broadcast.
