WWE made a lot of big changes to the NXT brand last September when they rebranded it as NXT 2.0 with the idea to use younger stars instead of veterans.
Since that time they’ve pushed the likes of Bron Breakker, Tony D’Angelo, Grayson Waller, and Carmelo Hayes in addition to using main rosters stars from Raw like AJ Styles, Rey Mysterio, Dolph Ziggler, and The Miz. The reasoning behind using Raw stars on the show is to help boost ratings.
The ratings for the show were going down before the relaunch of NXT. Thus far this year, NXT has been averaging between 551,000 and 685,000 viewers on USA Network. They were down for Syfy episodes, but that was expected.
Andrew Zarian of the Mat Men Pro Wrestling Podcast mentioned during Thursday’s episode that the network is happy with the current ratings of NXT 2.0.
“They’re doing good in the ratings. 620,000ish, they’re not doing terrible. USA Network is happy with this. I had a conversation with someone on Tuesday from USA and they’re like, ‘Yeah, we’re fine with the six-somethings,’ because listen, even with that slammed roster with like NXT being NXT they were doing the 700,000s….USA doesn’t care if there are some WWE guys there, they just want ratings. I think they’re happy with the 600 and something rating you know like that 620-650, a 7 [00] for like a big show that’s like. That’s a decent range. Yeah, it’s not that bad.”
