The White/Fertitta spinoff show continues to lose the bulk of its AEW lead-in audience.
Four weeks into its run on TBS, Dana White’s Power Slap League continues to slide in the ratings. Despite the continued strong lead-ins from AEW Wrestling, the slap fighting league failed to crack the top 60 shows on Wednesday night’s original cable telecasts.
According to ShowBuzzDaily, AEW Wrestling had 899,000 viewers in the 8 p.m. slot and a .30 rating in the 18-49 demographic—with a .24 rating with 18-34-year-old viewers. That put the sports-entertainment promotion in fifth for the night in original cable telecasts. ESPN’s NBA game at 10:05 p.m. between the Dallas Mavericks and the LA Clippers led the night’s overall cable ratings on Wednesday with 1.602 million viewers and a .58 rating among 18-49 year-olds and .52 in the 18-34 demographic. The 899,000 lead-in from AEW was the lowest number the TBS wrestling broadcast garnered since Power Slap debuted on the network on January 18.
For the February 8 broadcast, Power Slap came in at No. 68 for the night with 275,000 viewers and a 0.08 share in the 18-49 age range. That number is a new low for White’s latest attempt to break into something other than MMA, dropping from last week’s previous low of 284,000 viewers and a 0.09 share among 18-49 viewers.
Shows that performed better than Power Slap with 10 p.m. starts included South Park (Comedy Central), the Ingraham Angle (FOX News), Watch What Happens Live (Bravo), House Hunters (HGTV), 1000-lb Best Friends (TLC) and Kingdom Business (BET).
Power Slap pulled 295,000 viewers in its debut. That week AEW provided the broadcast with a lead-in of 969,000 viewers. In Week 2, Power Slap had an amazing lead-in from AEW Wrestling, compliments of that broadcasts tribute to the late Jay Briscoe. Power Slap finished that night with 413,000 viewers off a lead-in of 1.003 million.
Power Slap was initially scheduled to debut on Wednesday, December 11. White addressed the delay of the show’s first episode at the UFC Vegas 67 post-fight press conference saying, “We pushed it back a week because I was supposed to come back (from vacation) and do this whole media tour, which obviously wasn’t going to happen when I got back.”
Ahead of Power Slap’s debut, White told potential viewers who were critical of the “sport,” “Nobody’s asking you to watch this! Oh, you’re disgusted by it? Watch The Voice.”