Published: Jul 19, 2018 by Liam | Last Updated: Jul 19, 2018 by Liam
Liam has been reporting & analyzing wrestling news for over eight years, and is currently the Managing Editor at WrestleTalk.com. Immersed in wrestling for 18 years, he has over 11,000 published articles in addition to leading and overseeing WrestleTalk.com's coverage.
(Not very) hot off the heels of Extreme Rules, this week’s Raw and SmackDown shows were the first in the buildup to August 19’s SummerSlam event.
TV Ratings have been a mixed bag recently, mostly negative, so let’s see how WWE fared this week in the WWE Raw and SmackDown Live TV ratings report.
Last week (July 9), on the Extreme Rules “go-home” show, Raw clocked in at 2.47 million viewers, which is the lowest number of people to ever watch Raw.
Before this week’s show, there was the promise of some huge developments regarding WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar. He either had to turn up to the show, agree to a match at SummerSlam, or be stripped of the title.
The promise of such a big angle meant an increase in viewers to 2.866 million viewers.
While it is an increase, which is obviously a positive, it does mean that Raw still hasn’t reached three million viewers for 11 weeks, the last being on April 30 with 3.066 million.
Here’s the hourly breakdown of this week’s Raw:
- 8 pm hour – 3.118 million
- 9 pm hour – 2.859 million
- 10 pm hour + overrun – 2.622 million
Source: ShowBuzz Daily
SmackDown Live increased to 2.183 million viewers last week (July 10), an increase on 2.013 million that tuned in a week prior (July 3).
Before this past Tuesday’s show, it was advertised that WWE Champion AJ Styles would face Andrade Almas in a non-title match, and Shinsuke Nakamura would defend is newly won WWE United States Championship against Jeff Hardy in Hardy’s contractual rematch.
This meant ‘Team Blue’ saw an increase to 2.293 million viewers this week.
It is the first time the blue brand has seen an increase for two straight weeks since March.
The figure also marks the second highest viewership for SmackDown in the last six weeks.
Source: ShowBuzz Daily
Summary
An increase for both shows this week is, of course, a positive sign that things are beginning to ramp up again now we’re on our way to SummerSlam.
However, with Roman Reigns vs. Bobby Lashley being the selling point of next week’s Raw, I’m very skeptical as to whether the upward trend will continue, or whether we’ll end up with a similar figure to last week. I feel the latter is more likely.
SmackDown Live, on the other hand, I can see continuing to increase. Not only was Tuesday’s show the best in a very, very long time, there’s also a lot of interest building into next week’s episode, namely AJ Styles’ SummerSlam challenger being revealed.
What do you make of this week’s ratings? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter here. You can also join us on Discord to chat with Oli, Luke, the magazine team, the website writers and each other here!
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