There’s a long history of WWE’s Monday Night Raw outdrawing its other weekly Smackdown show, but that changed this week thanks to the WWE Draft. The first WWE Draft in five years gave Smackdown a huge ratings boost, with Tuesday’s show drawing 3.170 million viewers on USA, an increase of over a million from the 2.068 million viewers who tuned in for the taped Smackdown last week. Even more notably, it beat the 3.133 million viewers who tuned in for Monday night’s Raw broadcast. Uproxx’s Bill Hanstock wrote that this goes beyond WWE’s expectations:
WWE was hoping for big things by moving Smackdown to a live show on Tuesday nights and jump-starting interest by returning to the brand extension with the first WWE Draft in five years. But even they probably didn’t expect they would see a ratings spike like this.
With the overnight numbers being reported by ShowBuzzDaily.com, Smackdown’s ratings were up by over a million viewers from the last taped episode, which aired last Thursday night. It turns out that promoting a show as a massively big deal and having important things happen on it might lead to an increase in ratings! We’ll have to write that down so we remember it later.
Yes, the first edition of Smackdown Live pulled in 3.170 million viewers. Not only is that a YUUUUUGE increase from last week’s 2.068 million viewers, but it actually topped Monday’s episode of Raw, headlined by a WWE Championship match between Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins.
Of course, Smackdown may not be able to maintain that momentum in the many weeks where they won’t have a featured event like the draft, but this is still a major milestone for that franchise. We’ll see if Smackdown can keep viewers’ interest in the weeks to come.
[Uproxx]
Comments are closed.