Tuesday night’s episode of WWE Smackdown Live was the go-home show for Sunday’s Battleground pay-per-view. Although all of the pieces were put in place for Sunday’s show (or at least most of them), in true go-home show fashion, nothing really actually happened. There was a singles version of the tag title match, a tag match version of two singles matches, and a preview of the Punjabi Prison match that highlighted how convoluted the Punjabi Prison match is.
But as it turns out, people really wanted to see that Punjabi Prison. At least, that’s the only explanation we can thing of for the ratings getting a sizable bump this week. Things continue to get healthier and healthier for WWE in the ratings as the NBA Playoffs fade away in the rearview mirror and the road to SummerSlam stretches out before us.
According to ShowbuzzDaily, Tuesday’s Smackdown Live jumped up three percent in total viewers over last week, pulling in 2.548 million pairs of eyeballs, compared to last week’s 2.465 million viewers for the two-hour average. The all-important demographic rating for viewers aged 18-49 saw an even bigger jump, as the show did a 0.81 rating in that demo, up seven percent from last week’s 0.76.
All this translates to Smackdown Live once again being the number one show on cable for the evening, and it was the best rating and viewership for the blue brand since June 27. WWE is likely loving ratings being up for both Smackdown and Raw as we head into the long stretch of NO pay-per-views until SummerSlam. This is probably super sustainable, right? Yeah, probably.
