WWE claims ‘Raw’ Netflix debut more than doubled linear audience

With WWE Raw moving to Netflix, one of the biggest questions from a sports media perspective has been how the show’s performance on the streamer will be measured.

But while we may no longer have weekly ratings to check in on every Tuesday — a time honored tradition among wrestling fans dating back to the “Monday Night Wars” of the late-1990s — both WWE and Netflix are clearly happy with Raw‘s debut on the platform.

So much so, that the two entities sent out a joint press release on Thursday touting the success of Monday’s show. According to the release, the first episode of Raw on Netflix was watched by 4.9 million Live+1 views globally, including 2.6 million households in the United States, per VideoAmp.

Domestically, 2.6 million viewers marks a 116 percent increase from Raw‘s average of 1.2 million households per episode in 2024, which marked the weekly show’s final year airing on the USA Network. That figure is also higher than any episode of Raw in the last five years, and doubled the show’s audience in the key 18-49 demographic from 2024.

While WWE put forth a WrestleMania-caliber show on Monday night, the fact that Raw managed to increased its audience in its first episode of the streamer is certainly an encouraging sign. Although Netflix’s reach is one of the platform’s biggest appeals, there’s still a barrier for entry, as evidenced by the streamer’s NFL Christmas Day doubleheader drawing a slightly smaller audience than what the TV networks that aired the games had garnered on the holiday a year prior.

Moving forward, it will be interesting to monitor not only how well WWE performs on Netflix, but how often we become privy to such information now that it’s no longer being measured by Nielsen. But while most episodes of Raw won’t be WrestleMania-caliber or receive the promotion that Monday’s did, a baseline for the show’s performance has now been set in what appears to be a promising sign for Raw‘s presence on its new home.