Source: IWHeadlines.com
Recent viewership estimates for iMPACT Wrestling on Challenge TV in the United Kingdom are now available. The estimates show that the flagship show for iMPACT Wrestling continues to be the most watched professional wrestling program in the United Kingdom and the top rated program for Challenge TV.
The episode of iMPACT Wrestling that aired on Tuesday, August 2, 2011 was estimated to have approximately 297,000 viewers. This estimate is an increase of about 66,000 viewers from the prior week’s episode, which brought in about 231,000 viewers.
By comparison, WWE’s Monday Night RAW aired on Monday, August 1, 2011 and had approximately 129,000 viewers on Sky Sports 3. Smackdown aired on Friday, August 5, 2011 and had approximately 126,000 viewers – also on Sky Sports 3.
Here is what I find interesting about the numbers for the week ending August 6, 2011 (August 7, 2011 across the pond). Not only did iMPACT Wrestling bring in more than double the viewers of both RAW and Smackdown, but in order to bring WWE programming up to the same viewership level as TNA Entertainment programming, you’d have to add the viewership estimates for RAW (129,000 viewers), Smackdown (126,000 viewers), Experience (34,000 viewers), and Bottom Line (25,000 viewers). Adding the viewers for these six hours of WWE programming would bring total viewership to 314,000 – some 17,000 more than the two hour episode of iMPACT Wrestling.
If you’re interested in iMPACT Wrestling’s ratings performance in the United States for 2010 and 2011, then check out IWHeadlines.com’s Ratings War area. In the Ratings War area you can see a comparison of iMPACT Wrestling vs. Monday Night RAW from the spring of 2010 and iMPACT Wrestling vs. Superstars from all of 2010 and the first part of 2011. In addition, you can see all of the viewership estimates (from this side of the pond) for 2011, too. Enjoy!
There are an incredible amount of hateful people out there. You know these folks – the ones that hate iMPACT Wrestling/TNA Wrestling and will do whatever it takes to neglect their accomplishment. On another website, I read comments about the story about being biased because it doesn’t mention that Challenge TV is free and Sky Sports is a paid channel. First, doesn’t everyone know that already? Geez.
Second, is it not part of iMPACT Wrestling’s “good job” moment that they opted to ink a deal with a free channel while WWE opted to ink a deal with a paid channel? I don’t know who runs those portions of each promotion’s operations, but if you’re trying to get maximum exposure in a country – well, it seems like the person who makes these decisions for iMPACT Wrestling is the one who made the right decision.
I’ll never understand why some folks just don’t want to stop and say, “Wow. That’s actually pretty impressive for an otherwise small promotion that runs nearly all of their television shows out of a crappy television studio with ‘fans’ in attendance who don’t give a damn about what’s going on.”
And the other thing that I’ll never understand is how people are shocked that someone who writes on (owns, actually) a site called TNAStars.com might be happy to post this type of news (and it certainly is news whether the anti-TNA haters like it or not). This is my brand – I’m a fan. I was a fan of WWE for a long, long time and then their programming just grew away from me. Yet no one thought it was biased when I was writing about how WWE was demolishing WCW in the ratings.
Some people just have an irrational hatred of iMPACT Wrestling. Oh well – that’s their mental problem, not mine. 🙂
hi joe
im just wondering if the impact wrestling fans from ireland are included in the uk viewership estimates ?
challange tv is readily available here in irl on sky and freeview satelite providers .
if not im sure you could ad another 30000+ to that rating.
Hey James – The figures include viewership from the 6 counties of Northern Ireland, but not the 26 counties in the Republic of Ireland. If you know a good source for the television ratings in those 26 counties, please let me know and I’ll do some investigation. Thanks!