Has important are ratings really?

By Scott Keith on 8th May 2023

Every Thursday the same people on Twitter gleefully post the Dynamite ratings as a GOTCHA.
You fielded a question about MJF being a flop as champion because of declining ratings. But as the ratings slip WBD is giving AEW a new 2-hour show, there are streaming rumors with HBO MAX, and they’re killing ticket sales for Wembley, their largest gate/show ever.
So I guess my question is, who cares about the ratings? It seems WBD is cool with AEW. They’re drawing 130k+ ppv buys and that will likely increase with FD2, All In coming.
It wasn’t long ago that WWE was hitting weekly low ratings for RAW but with streaming money and Saudi, it never impacted their bottomline.
Are ratings just a thing that heats up the most tribal of our niche gang or do they actually matter?
Thanks,
Dan from Bklyn
Sent from my iPhone

They’re a metric like any other. If WBD is happy then they don’t matter. If they suddenly decide they want a million viewers then they’ll matter again.