AEW Losing Canadian Television Network Had Nothing To Do With Ratings

AEW’s partnership with Warner Bros Discovery has certainly helped them out a lot. Despite their growing presence, they lost a French-Canadian television network recently, but it had nothing to do with ratings.

As previously reported, French Canadian broadcaster RDS announced that it would no longer be airing AEW Dynamite in French after December 28th, 2022. Fans started wondering why this was the case.

According to Dave Meltzer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, AEW didn’t end up losing the Canadian television network due to low ratings. Simply put, it was due to budget cuts.

“Canada’s RDS, which aired Dynamite in French with viewership mostly in Quebec, announced on 12/28 that it was dropping the show.

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RDS was doing budget cutting and one of the things they cut was the French language commentary on some shows including AEW.

The RDS deal was part of AEW’s deal with Bell Media (which owns TSN and RDS), so from a money standpoint, AEW is working with the same money deal from Bell but it does hurt exposure with French viewers in Quebec. Bell ordered RDS to make cuts.”

AEW Dynamite aired on the channel with French commentary, beginning in August of this year, but that is all in the past now. Regardless, Tony Khan will likely find a replacement very soon and that’s all that matters.

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