WWE Raw last night drew the most viewers the show has done since the start of the NFL season, but the 18-49 number declined significantly from last week. The show did face much tougher competition last night.
Raw averaged 1.56 million viewers and drew a 0.43 rating in 18-49 going against the Raiders-Packers Monday Night Football game as well as baseball playoff games.
The football game did 7.18 million viewers/2.37 on ESPN, 9.17 million viewers/1.78 on ABC, and 1.04 million viewers/0.39 on ESPN2. In total, the game did 17.38 million viewers and a 4.55. That's compared to the 16.59 million/4.40 that Monday Night Football did last week.
The difference is the two playoff baseball games on TBS, with the Philadelphia vs. Atlanta game against the first hour doing 3.14 million/0.85 and Arizona vs. Los Angeles against the final two hours doing 2.22 million/0.55.
WWE usually will have a bump coming off a PPV event. and Raw was up three percent in viewers from last week, but it was down 11 percent in 18-49 and down 20 percent in 18-34. The baseball factor is probably related to the decline from last week with younger viewers but even with the competition Raw had a marked increase with people over 50.
The episode peaked in the opening segment with Seth Rollins and Drew McIntyre and had the usual ratings pattern for the show. The Cody Rhodes & Jey Uso vs. Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn main event did 1.40 million viewers.
From one year ago, Raw was down 15 percent in viewers, down 22 percent in 18-49, and down 20 percent in 18-34. That number was unusually large since there was a DX reunion, plus a strong tease of Bray Wyatt's TV return that boosted the ratings of the show last year (which wasn't delivered on that episode). Raw episodes this year have mostly been way up with younger viewers than the same week last year so this was an aberration.
The three hours were:
- 8 p.m. 1.62 million viewers
- 9 p.m. 1.61 million viewers
- 10 p.m. 1.45 million viewers
