WWE News: ‘Monday Night RAW’ Ratings Falling Hard With Roman Reigns As World Champion
It’s not really shocking that a lot of fans are not fans of Roman Reigns, and they were even less thrilled that he won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship from Triple H at WrestleMania 32. It’s now obvious that many fans are actually doing their own version of rioting, and they’re doing it by striking against the promotion. Ratings for the past two weeks of Monday Night RAW have dropped hard and keep on falling with Reigns on top.
On the go-home show for WrestleMania 32, all the big names were present on Monday Night Raw, and the numbers were up to 3.77 million viewers and a 2.66 rating. That had gone up from the week before, and Cageside Seats reported that it was the first time WWE had seen a rise in the ratings in a month.
Some may look at the current ratings and think that things are going well, and in some ways, they are. The thing is that WWE has to wonder what the problem is with longstanding ratings for Monday Night RAW, and how they’ve continued to decline over the course of the last 2 years.
The night after WrestleMania 32 was a big one for WWE, and Monday Night RAW was actually a great show with Shane McMahon in charge of it all.
ProWrestling.net reported that the Monday Night RAW on the night after WrestleMania 31 last year drew a rating of 3.68 with an average of 5.363 million viewers. That makes a gigantic drop from one year to the next, and it’s a huge cause of concern.
WrestleMania 31 took place on March 29 last year, and the second Monday Night RAW which happened a full week later drew a 2.81 rating with 3.963 million viewers. That was on Apr. 6, 2015, and when compared to this year around the same date, they were almost the same.
That’s also not a good sign.
On the night after WrestleMania 32, WWE had to compete with the NCAA Basketball Championship Game, and that may have hurt the ratings some. This week, there was no serious competition for RAW and yet it still fell in the ratings.
Over the course of the last year, WWE’s ratings have been quite horrible for their standards, and it has been blamed on numerous things. Bleacher Report puts it on the creative product simply being bad overall and all throughout the company.
What Culture says that ratings are hard to judge now as the Nielsen Ratings System doesn’t take DVR and other things into account. There is inconsistency with who watches the show when and what kind of device they are watching it on.
Maybe fans are tuning out due to so many injuries and their favorite stars not being on WWE television.
The reaction he gets from the crowd shows that fans are tired of him and when talk started up of a strike of the WrestleMania 32 main event, it wasn’t taken seriously. The reason for that is because no-one believed it would happen, and it didn’t. The stands remained full for that event and no-one walked out.
Now, though, the ratings for WWE shows are dropping and drastically. Maybe some of the fans have finally decided to do something about it, as Forbes suggested, and they are doing it by turning off the TV. They know that Reigns is the focal point as he is the champion, and if they don’t watch, WWE doesn’t get the ratings.
The fans have spoken, and they’ve let it be known that they just don’t like Roman Reigns, or at least this version of him. As a do-it-all John Cena-esque babyface, fans have totally turned on him and they just don’t care anymore. Now that he is WWE Champion, they seem to be actually doing something about it, and that’s why ratings for Monday Night RAW will likely just keep on dropping.
[Image via WWE]
