The Power Slap ratings jumped in week 2, even as the broadcast lost 590,000 AEW viewers.
Dana White’s Power Slap League saw its viewership and ratings improve fairly dramatically in its second week on TBS. In part thanks to an even bigger lead in from AEW, from which the show still lost a majority of the pro-wrestling promotion’s viewers for their broadcast on Wednesday, January 25.
According to ShowBuzzDaily, AEW Wrestling had 1.003 million viewers in the 8 p.m. slot. AEW had a .31 rating in the 18-49 demographic and a .27 rating with 18-34-year-old viewers. With those numbers, AEW trailed only the two ESPN NBA games for the night’s overall cable ratings on Wednesday.
Power Slap finished in the No. 30 position this week with 413,000 viewers. The 10 p.m. broadcast had a .13 rating among 18-49-year-old viewers and .008 in the 18-34 demographic. Power Slap’s numbers were 590,000 viewers less than AEW’s.
Last week’s debut episode of Power Slap—which TBS delayed a week after White was caught on video slapping his wife, while on a family vacation in Mexico—was No. 45 in the top 50 cable telecasts for Wednesday, January 18, 2023. The debut episode pulled a reported 295,000 viewers and a 0.10 rating in the 18-49 demographic. The show finished at No. 50 for the night.
The January 18 AEW broadcast, which like this week, was No. 3 for the night behind ESPN’s NBA games, had 969,000 viewers and a .31 share in the 18-49 demographic. As for 18-34- year-old viewers, AEW had an 0.22 rating in that age bracket.
Power Slap finished second to BET’s Kingdom Business when considering cable shows with a 10 p.m. start time. Kingdom Business drew 639,000 viewers and a 0.14 rating in the 18-49 age range. The third highest rated 10 p.m. cable show on Wednesday was ID’s Homicide Hunter: American with 737,000 viewers and a rating of 0.11 for viewers between 18 and 49.
TBS initially scheduled Power Slap 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 competitive slapping showcase that, “Nobody’s asking you to watch this! Oh, you’re disgusted by it? Watch The Voice.”