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Everyone’s timelines blew the hell up on Monday night, when the Ball family stopped by WWE Raw. It was a baffling segment that included LaVar Ball taking his shirt off, a word you’re not supposed to say on basic cable family programming, and just generally the Balls being the Balls.
It was a no-brainer for WWE to bring in LaVar Ball for Raw’s return to the Staples Center, and to be the company to present Lonzo Ball’s first quasi-appearance as a Laker at his new home arena. But WWE was probably hoping for a bit of a ratings bump by bringing the most hated man in America and his expensive shoes on their television show. As it turns out, people may not hate LaVar in the “I need to tune in to hate this guy” sense.
According to ShowBuzzDaily, Raw’s three-hour average was 2.97 million viewers, down from last week’s average of 3.10 million. The first hour ended up being the one that dragged the average down, as only 2.88 million tuned in for the first hour, viewership jumped up to 3.09 million in the second hour, and then had a perfectly solid 2.95 million viewers in its final hour. Raw was the most-watched program on cable for the evening, but a bit of a dud for the second post-NBA episode, especially given the buzz-worthy family’s appearance.
It’s not all bad news, obviously. The rating more or less held steady (you gotta stay positive), and people are going to be talking about that MizTV segment for a good long while. I mean, until next week’s Raw, at least.
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I watch Raw almost every week. That was honestly one of the worst segments I have ever witnessed. Lavar Ball might be the most annoying person on the planet.
I agree with all of this ^^^
They’ve had enough trouble getting wrestling fans to tune into their wrestling show. Do they really think they’ll be able to draw in non-wrestling fans by booking the Father of a Not-Yet-NBA player at the very last minute with almost no advertising ahead of time? Wrestling fans don’t care about the guy, and basketball fans don’t care about him enough to turn on Raw and see what he’s up to. It’s like if an NBA team advertised that Vince Russo would be in the house 5 minutes before tipoff and were shocked that people didn’t make a mad dash for the ticket windows to see it
It’s a 3 hour show. I think it was designed just to fill the time. That seems to be the low bar WWE is setting for themselves.
Vince probably had someone tell him they could book a “celebrity” and that’s all he needed to hear.
“LaVar Ball Didn’t Exactly Bring Big Ratings To WWE Raw” No shit. In other news the sky is blue and water is wet.
RAW was up against the NBA Awards show- which likely accounted for the vast majority of “we’d turn into watch LaVar” demographic. (so arguably this wasn’t post NBA).
I mean, it led nowhere and accomplished nothing, it should have been a post-show dark segment if it had to exist.
Surprisingly, I was ok with the segment… I had the sound off.