WWE News: ‘Raw’ Ratings Stay Low For New Year’s Eve Episode
For the WWE, there’s good news and bad news when it comes to this week’s Monday Night Raw viewership. The good news is that there was a substantial increase over last week’s Christmas Eve episode. The bad news is that the show still stayed under 2 million viewers on average for the New Year’s Eve episode.
In total, the show averaged 1.968 million viewers over the three-hour program, according to a report from Wrestling Inc. Last week, Raw averaged only 1.775 million, which makes for an increase of 11.8 percent. While not exactly a number that’ll set the world on fire, it’s still a solid jump for a taped episode airing on a holiday.
The first hour drew 2.035 million viewers, while last week’s hour one only drew 1.752 million. For the second hour, Raw was watched by 2.026 million viewers. Last week’s second-hour rating was 1.789 million viewers. The third hour saw a massive drop-off this week, averaging only 1.843 million viewers, which isn’t much better than last week’s 1.784 million.
The main event of Raw this week was a tag team match featuring Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey and Natalya against Nia Jax and Tamina Snuka. The show opened with a cage match between Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler, which could explain why the first hour had such strong viewership when compared to the rest of the show.
Next week is really the show to watch as far as the ratings go. It’s the first live episode since the holidays, and, as reported by the Inquisitr, it features the return of both Braun Strowman and Brock Lesnar. If the WWE doesn’t put up a good rating for that episode, it could be a little worrying.
For all cable shows, Raw was actually No. 4. It was behind the NC State vs. Texas A&M college football game, the Missouri vs. Oklahoma State college football game, and the Cincinnati vs. Virginia Tech college football game. The No. 1 show on cable was the NC State vs. Texan A&M game, which did an average of 5.142 million viewers.
It is indeed a HAPPY NEW YEAR for @RondaRousey & @NatbyNature TONIGHT! #RAW pic.twitter.com/7t7cnlrL22
— WWE Universe (@WWEUniverse) January 1, 2019
Wrestling Inc. actually kept track of the Raw ratings throughout all of 2018, and in total, the show did 149.628 million viewers spread over 53 episodes, with an average per-episode viewership of 2.823 million.
The most viewed episode of Raw was the Raw 25 special that aired on January 22, 2018. It averaged an impressive 4.530 million viewers. The least viewed episode of the show was last week’s Christmas Eve episode, which did the aforementioned 1.775 million viewers average.
