The road to WWE SummerSlam has provided some good news in terms of television ratings for Monday Night Raw. The numbers have been consistently up over the last month thanks to the excitement surrounding the Universal Title match at SummerSlam with Brock Lesnar defending the BIG RED BELT (not exactly the BIG GOLD BELT, is it?) against Braun Strowman, Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe in a fourway match this Sunday.
While WWE would have liked to see a rise in this week’s ratings, they actually went down a bit from last week because this week’s show did 3.223 million viewers according to Showbuzz Daily. Last week’s number came in 3.23 million viewers in the final tally, so it’s really not much of a drop at all. That show was headlined by the much publicized Reigns vs. Strowman Last Man Standing match that was heavily promoted.
This week’s Raw had the four guys in the 4-way match featured in a promo segment that was only advertised on the day of the show. Two weeks ago we congratulated Raw for 3.16 million viewers as the highest in three months and they topped it in the next two weeks. That’s a positive.
The three hours for this week’s Raw was different from the usual pattern where hour two had the most viewers. This week it was the first hour that led the way with 3.419 million viewers, hour two had 3.293 million viewers and the third hour was last place like usual with 2.988 million viewers. I think the Shield reunion featuring Rollins and Ambrose likely had a big part in that first hour doing so well because it was a hot start to the show. Raw beat everything else on cable TV on Monday too.
The upward trend is a good sign for WWE. If you look back to mid-June they were doing 2.5 million viewers for Raw. There was some stiffer competition on television back then, but it’s still something to be happy about when you have 700,000 more viewers tuning in for the last show before SummerSlam. I’m trying be positive here, people!
I assume next week’s number will rise a bit because the night after a major PPV tends to go up the next night on Raw. Things should start moving in a downward trend in the second week of second September, when the NFL on ESPN has a doubleheader on Monday, September 11.
