Understanding Impact Wrestling's Disappointing Pursuit Channel Debut Viewership Total
The Wrestling Observer reported that the first episode of Impact Wrestling on the Pursuit Channel on January 11th drew an average of 12,500 viewers. This number was more comparable to the Twitch viewership peak that evening of 10,422 viewers, as opposed to previous television viewership numbers for the company.
The Pursuit Channel is available in about 27 million homes as compared to 66 million homes on Pop TV, in numbers available via Sports TV Ratings. The final viewership number Impact did on Pop TV was 151,000 viewers. With The Pursuit Channel being available in about 41% of the homes as Pop TV airs, an equivalent viewership would have been about 62,000 viewers but only drew 16% of that deflated number.
While viewer total were not available for TNA's run on Fox Sports Net in 2005, the average rating over its run was a 0.2, according to Multichannel News. The premier of TNA on Spike averaged 670,000 viewers on October 1, 2005 with 980,000 viewing the last first-run episode on Spike TV on November 19, 2014.
The Destination America premiere drew 359,000 viewers on January 7, 2015. The official premier episode on Pop on January 5th, 2016 drew 255,000 with 90,000 people on the replay. There were two Best Of episodes in late December 2015 drew between 110,000-136,000 viewers.
To put things in perspective in 2018, According to a listing on The Wrap, Pop TV was the 66th highest rated station for average viewership, with a 148,000 viewer average in prime time. The Pursuit Channel does not appear on the list but may not have qualified as a deal was reached in late February with Neilsen to measure the audience. Stations ranked over 109 were not listed and were below 1,000 viewers in prime time. BeIN Sports (which airs MLW) averaged 6,000 viewers in prime time.
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