It was not a good night for WWE’s Smackdown brand in terms of their television viewing audience. In fact, it was the second worst night of 2017 in terms of USA Network that watched the show live. While DVR numbers don’t come in right away, this could have been one of those weeks where people used the DVR more than usual because of outside distractions on Tuesday that included Halloween and Game 6 of the Major League Baseball World Series.
This week’s Smackdown did 2.119 million viewers according to Showbuzz Daily. That’s the second lowest number of viewers for Smackdown this year with only June 13 drawing a lower number with 2.072 million viewers. I thought that show went up against the NBA Finals, but when I looked it up I saw the NBA Finals ended a day earlier, so it was just a slow period for WWE with Jindermania running wild, brother.
Last week’s show did 2.699 million viewers, which means 500,000 less people watched this week’s show. A half a million drop is significant. No doubt about it. Smackdown from two weeks ago did about 2.32 million viewers. The usual range for Smackdown’s audience is about 2.5 to 2.6 million viewers. It should bounce back to that level next week since there won’t be major sports competition against the show.
The main reason for Smackdown’s audience going down so much is because Game 6 of the World Series did 18.916 million viewers. Compare that number to last Tuesday when Game 1 of the World Series did about 11.5 million viewers. Clearly, interest in the series has obviously gone up a lot as it nears its conclusion.
There was also Halloween on Tuesday. A lot of trick or treaters aren’t out there ringing doorbells when Smackdown aired at 8pmET, but some of them may not have been at home watching television, nor were there parents. It’s definitely a factor. Speaking of that, New Day’s costumes were amazing.
It’s a shame the numbers were down so much because I thought Smackdown was damn good this week with Shinsuke Nakamura beating Kevin Owens in a great main event match while Bobby Roode beat Dolph Ziggler in an entertaining 2 out of 3 falls match that was their best televised match to date. Big E and Rusev also had a competitive match that honored Rusev Day (which really is everyday) and overall it had a good feel to it.
Making excuses isn’t fun, but in this case I doubt WWE is going to worry too much because they can point to the World Series number being so huge. They should be able to bounce back to normal levels next week.
