AEW and WWE fans love to compare the two companies on any metric, statistic, or anecdote they can get their hands on. This week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter offered more fuel for the fire. Dave Meltzer collected data from Google to determine which United States markets where AEW and WWE performed the best as they aired their Full Gear and Survivor Series PPVs.
There are some interesting and surprising insights. It turns out, for instance, that WWE’s strongest market (according to Google search interest) is Dayton, Ohio. For AEW, the company is strong in Salt Lake City after the city was one of their weakest markets two years ago.
“In looking at the markets, this is the percentage of searches regarding WWE Survivor Series compared to Full Gear. A score of 100 would be the strongest markets Survivor Series and a score of 0 would be the strongest markets for Full Gear.
The strongest WWE markets (these are metropolitan areas and not the city itself) would be Dayton, Laredo, Tulsa, Memphis, New Orleans, Knoxville, El Paso and Albuquerque.
On the flip side, AEW’s strongest markets were Salt Lake City (which two years ago was one of its weakest), Baton Rouge, Houston (notable because they didn’t do well in that city with a debut live event), Minneapolis (also previously one of its weakest but the home market for a PPV is almost always going to have high interest in the show), Omaha, Buffalo, Green Bay and Indianapolis.”
AEW Full Gear showed a 7.5% higher interest in search traffic than WWE Survivor Series. This was the second PPV in a row where AEW gained more search interest than the WWE event that took place around the same time.
What do you think of these Google search interest numbers? Let us know in the comments.