In what is seemingly becoming a monthly tradition, WWE Raw viewership is continuing to freefall. This Monday’s edition, hot on the heels of a Survivor Series that left many nonplussed, averaged 2.95 million viewers over the three hours of the show, bottoming out at just 2.71 million viewers for the final hour.
That mark of 2.95 million viewers is not insignificant – it’s the lowest non-holiday viewership total for Raw since 1997 according to the Wrestling Observer. You can blame Monday Night Football all you want, but the lowest viewership this year throughout the NFL season was just 3.17 million viewers two weeks ago for a tape delayed show from England. To drop 200,000 viewers below the low watermark? Yeah, that’s not a good sign about the fanbase’s faith in the direction of the company.
It’s been a trying year for Raw. The post-WrestleMania show drew an astounding 5.3 million viewers, its largest viewership total in three years. But as the year went on, viewership never approached that mark once again, and only crossed four million average viewers twice. Raw lost 10% of their viewership from last week’s episode to this week’s, which is something you rarely see on either end of a pay-per-view (or whatever you want to call the monthly supercards that you used to pay $60 for but you can now see on WWE Network for $9.99 per month).
Keep in mind, and I cannot emphasize this enough, that 2.95 million viewers is still a really good number for cable. This Monday, the only cable shows to average even two million were Major Crimes (2.49 million), a 4 PM showing of Spongebob Squarepants (2.10 million), Street Outlaws (2.45 million), Love & Hip Hop Hollwood (2.4 million), Monday Night Football and its pre and postgame shows… and Raw.
Now, if the viewership is still floundering in that area without MNF opposing it? Maybe then it’s time to fret a little bit. 12 of the first 14 Raws of the 2015 calendar year averaged at least 3.8 million viewers, a number that WWE would absolutely adore right now.
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