This week’s edition of WWE Raw provided some thrills with Jeff Hardy winning the opening match battle royal, Alexa Bliss winning the Raw Women’s Championship from Sasha Banks, and the John Cena/Roman Reigns promo segment that got the wrestling world talking. How did it do in terms of viewership numbers? Pretty good, but there was a drop from the week prior.
The main reason for the drop from last week’s Raw, which did 3.4 million viewers, is because that show followed a major event like SummerSlam. Any time there’s a Raw that follows WrestleMania, Royal Rumble or SummerSlam the expectation is that the numbers will go up and that’s what happened. This week’s Raw fell a bit short of that number with 3.304 million viewers according to the good people at Showbuzz Daily. As mentioned, it was down from last week, but it was also the highest rated Raw since the post Superstar Shake-Up show on April 17 that did about 3.35 million viewers.
Here’s how the three hour breakdown looked this week:
- Hour one led the way with 3.384 million viewers
- Hour two was second with 3.364 million viewers. Most weeks, hour two is the strongest of the three and the end of that hour had that electrifying Cena/Reigns segment.
- Hour three came in last like usual with 3.163 million viewers.
Next week’s Raw takes place on Labor Day (September 4), the last long weekend of the summer. Fans don’t usually tune into TV shows as much that day and the number should go down a bit. WWE has already advertised Jeff Hardy challenging The Miz for the Intercontinental Title on next week’s Raw.
NEXT WEEK: @JEFFHARDYBRAND looks to capture the #ICTitle for the first time since 2008 when he challenges @mikethemiz on #RAW! pic.twitter.com/DJPMpQrPry
— WWE (@WWE) August 29, 2017
The following week, September 11, is when NFL Monday Night Football is back and that usually affects the Raw ratings so much so that it tends to be under three million viewers from September through December. We’ll see if WWE will be able to avoid the significant drop this year.
