Wrestle Kingdom 15 Sets New Japan World Record

Speaking on the most recent Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that the first night of NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 15 this week set a New Japan World record as the most-watched live event in the platform’s history.

Meltzer noted that this was somewhat understandable, with COVID guidelines meaning significantly fewer people were able to watch the show from the Tokyo Dome, meaning more had to watch from home:

“The first night of the Tokyo Dome was the most watched live event in the history of New Japan World. Which actually, if you think about it, makes sense because if they had let’s say 15/16,000 in the building, and normally they would have like 43,000, there’s 27,000 people right there that would normally be in the building watching it live that are probably watching it. And that’s a big difference when your subscriber number is just over 100,000. Maybe a bit more over 100,000 because, I don’t have a number yet, I may have it in a couple of days, but I did hear they had a surprisingly good bump. Which may be the people who would usually go to the show live that couldn’t go and said ‘well I can’t go live so we’re gonna subscribe and watch the show.’ But they had, not like an all-time record or anything as far as the bump up, but it was a strong bump up. I think they started at 110,000, I know that the last number I heard was 110 as far as 110,000 subscribers. They had gone down when they weren’t running any shows, and they ended up staying at a pretty steady rate and they went up to about 110,000 with the G1 and that’s where they’ve kinda been hanging at. So I think that this one, there was a pretty significant jump.”

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NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 15 may have been the first big show of the year, but promotions will have to pull out all the stops to put on a bigger wrestling event this year, with some early match of the year contenders on the card.

Also on the Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer gave some additional information on why WWE made the decision to scrap the main roster call-up of Damian Priest. You can read more about that by clicking here.

What are your thoughts on the above story? Let us know in the comments on Twitter or Facebook.

• tokyo dome
• New Japan World
• Wrestle Kingdom
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