WWE News: ‘Raw’ Ratings Set Another Record This Week
If there’s one thing the WWE seems to be incredibly good at, it’s setting record new lows for the ratings. For this week’s episode, the WWE managed to kick the show off strong but it didn’t stay that way. However, by the third hour, the show actually saw the largest first to third-hour drop of all time.
Starting off, Raw managed to get an impressive 2.84 million viewers in the first hour, which is above average for recent episodes. However, it saw a large drop in the second hour, down to 2.40 million viewers. From there, the viewership tanked even harder, down to 2.14 million viewers.
In total, that’s a drop of 24.5 percent of its first-hour viewership by the third hour. That’s the all-time record for viewers lost of any episode of Raw. According to Wrestling Observer, the previous record took place on October 27, 2017, which saw a drop of 23.3 percent over the three-hour episode.
There are a couple of different factors that may have contributed to the drop in ratings. First, there was a big basketball game featuring the Golden State Warriors that started during the third hour. Fans could have tuned out to watch that game instead of Raw.
That’s an optimistic outlook, though. More likely is that the advertised main event featuring Ronda Rousey and Natalia versus Sasha Banks and Bayley didn’t keep the audience’s interest for the whole three-hour show.
Even scarier for the WWE is the fact that the ratings were on the rise for a little bit, but it appears that adding the McMahon’s to the mix was only a temporary fix to the ratings problem. Perhaps it means that the WWE needs to make bigger shifts in the way it does things to get the viewership up again.
Overall, with the solid viewership of the first hour, the show ended up averaging 2.46 million viewers, which isn’t a terrible number compared to some recent episodes. However, it is a 10 percent decrease from last week’s episode, so it is definitely an issue.
The team of @NatbyNature and @RondaRousey is READY. #RAW pic.twitter.com/GOc5dgBShX
— WWE Universe (@WWEUniverse) January 22, 2019
Overall, Raw was sixth for the night on cable, trailing behind the NBA by a little bit. Four new cable series also managed to beat out Monday Night Raw in the ratings as well.
We’d expect to see a bump in the ratings for this week’s episode, as it’s the first to follow the Royal Rumble, one of the WWE’s biggest shows of the year. Generally, the WWE sees a boost after its major PPV events, and we’d expect this one to be no different.
