How Netflix Calculates WWE Raw Viewership Revealed

Published: Feb 17, 2025 by Dave Adamson | Last Updated: Feb 17, 2025 by Dave Adamson

Dave has been a website writer for WrestleTalk since October 2022, having previously written for Den of Geek, among a number of wrestling, movie and television-related sites. Dave has been around the independent wrestling scene for more than a decade, including behind-the-scenes.

WWE

Further details of how Netflix calculates the audience for WWE Raw have now emerged following its frequent appearance in the Top 10 rankings.

From its debut episode on January 6, 2025, WWE Raw has been in the official Netflix Tudum Top 10 Rankings every week.

The post-Royal Rumble episode of WWE Raw on February 3, 2025, saw 3.1 million views and 6.1 millions hours viewed, an increase over the January 29 episode with 2.9 million views.

Wrestlenomics has now provided insight into the calculations that go into the Tudum ranking for WWE Raw.

Netflix has reported informed Wrestlenomics that the same methodology has been used every week since the show’s debut in January.

It was also confirmed that live viewing of WWE Raw is measured differently to the way that video-on-demand viewership is measured.

The difference is due to the run times of the shows affecting when Netflix subscribers choose to watch the show.

Wrestlenomics would go on to address questions raised over the way that WWE Raw’s audience was measured on Netflix.

Exploring the analysis of the views for WWE Raw within the context of the Tudum ratings, Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics states:

“In addition to global views, Netflix also lists the hours viewed for each program in the top 10, as well as the runtime.

“Views (a worldwide measurement, as Netflix is available throughout much of the world), seems to simply be a result of multiplying hours viewed by runtime. That is:

“Views = hours viewed × runtime (in hours).”

Using the February 3 episode of WWE Raw as an example of an apparent anomaly, Wrestlenomics points out that the viewership would be slightly higher than the 3.1m listed.

Revealing that the difference has been markedly higher for other episode of WWE Raw, Wrestlenomics quotes a Netflix representative as explaining:

“This is a matter of the runtime changing live versus on SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand).

“For live titles, we show the latest runtime on our Top 10. As an example, the January 6 premiere is listed as 2.4 hours long on Tudum (and on the product today) but was even longer live because of ads.

“When calculating Views, we implement a ‘Blended Views’ approach which calculates views for each individual cut (with its own runtime), and then takes the sum total.”

Thurston notes that the Royal Rumble showed no difference between the calculations and Netflix’s viewing figures after its views were published two days after February 1, 2025.

The views for the WWE Royal Rumble in both the calculations on the official number from Netflix stood at 2.1 million.

Transcript from Wrestlenomics.