SummerSlam provided quite a ratings bump for the following night’s episode of Monday Night Raw. As reported by 411Mania, the episode achieved a 1.07 rating and 3.096 million viewers, which are 11 percent and 10 percent better, respectively, than last week, which had a 0.97 rating and 2.825 million viewers. That’s the best since they reached 1.08 on April 30 episode, and the biggest audience since 3.104 million people watched the show on the April 21st. The only thing on cable that ranked higher was the VMA awards show on MTV, which is basically the SummerSlam of the music business (the Grammys are the WrestleMania, obviously).
The hourly ratings show that viewers did drop off in the last hour as usual, but not by too much:
8 PM: 1.04 demo rating (3.110 million viewers)
9 PM: 1.09 demo rating (3.241 million viewers)
10 PM: 1.05 demo rating (2.936 million viewers)
Obviously the overall ratings don’t reflect how good Raw was, they’re just about how much people wanted to see what happened after SummerSlam. However, setting up a Universal Title match for the main event in the first segment of the show was a good strategy for getting viewers to stick around, especially with Braun’s possible MITB cash-in being teased throughout.
On top of that, it won’t be surprising if the reunification of the Shield at the end of that match gets plenty of people to come back again next week.
