Raw just hasn’t been able to catch a break in the ratings for months now, between playoff games and national holidays. But now that Memorial Day, the NHL Stanley Cup Final, and now the NBA Finals are put to bed, there’s only the major hurdle of Fourth of July weekend between now and SummerSlam as far as Raw is concerned. Well, I mean there’s also Great Balls of Fire. I guess that’s like a hurdle. A hurdle of the mind.
But postseason sports didn’t go away without a parting shot. The Cavaliers stretched the series to Monday’s Game 5, and it was pretty evident that WWE made the easy decision to punt, apart from a hot opening segment with Brock Lesnar and Samoa Joe that led to a pull-apart, locker-room-clearing brawl.
And yes, that segment already has over four million (!) views on YouTube, but the rest of the show suffered a whopping 15 percent viewership drop from last week, as sports fans were far more interested in seeing if the Cavs could force a Game 6 or if Kevin Durant would get his first ring, rather than seeing if Dean Ambrose was in a bear suit.
(He was.)
ShowBuzz Daily, as always, has the numbers, and they’re rough. An average of only 2.542 million people watched the three-hour Raw, and although the first hour was healthy at 2.769 million viewers, people began leaving in droves once they realized that 1.) Samoa Joe probably wasn’t going to kick any more people in the face and 2.) LeBron James. 2.542 million is lower than the Memorial Day episode. Lower than the episode taped from London.
In fact, that average rating is a new all-time low for Raw. ALL TIME. Things will definitely improve by next week, but to paraphrase the next Raw brand PPV, goodness gracious.
