Last week, you may remember, WWE’s viewership numbers were extraordinarily low, with Raw doing its lowest numbers of the year, and Smackdown tying the lowest ratings it’s ever gotten on the USA Network. That’s apparently what led to Vince McMahon’s “Wild Card Rule,” which enables stars from each brand to appear on the other show without officially ending the Brand Split. If that sounds a bit confusing, it has been, but the most surprising thing of all is that it might have worked? This week’s viewership numbers still aren’t great, but they’re better than last week’s.
This week, according to Cageside Seats, Raw got an average of 2.24 million viewers, which is better than last week’s 2.15 million. Not a huge jump, but at least things might be starting to trend upward rather than downward. The first hour of Raw got 2.46 million viewers, which sunk to 2.24 million in the second hour and 2.02 million in the third, which is not as steep a drop-off as last week either.
As for Smackdown, Cageside reports that this week’s show had 1.931 million viewers, which is up from last week’s 1.833 million, but they still failed to get past that 2 million mark. Ratings were also up slightly in general, but their ratings with the key 18-49 demographic were the second lowest they’ve had this year.
Worth noting is that next week both shows will be on tape delay from the UK, so those numbers may not be reflective of the general trend.
