Last night's fast nationals saw SmackDown average 1.923 million viewers on Fox, the lowest number for the show since February 12. That was down 5.8 percent from last week's overnight viewership.
The show went against night two of this year's NFL Draft, which aired on ESPN, ABC, and the NFL Network. The draft coverage on ABC drew lower-than-usual numbers for that station, but the draft also draws from the same type of audience as SmackDown. The cable ratings from last night won't be out until Monday. Night one of the draft did its best ratings on ESPN.
Last night's SmackDown was headlined by a Universal Championship match where Daniel Bryan put his SmackDown career on the line against Roman Reigns. The show also featured an Intercontinental title match where Apollo Crews defended against Big E.
SmackDown drew the same 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demo as it has seven of the last eight weeks. That led all network programming.
In the 18-34 demo, SmackDown also led all network programming with a 0.3 rating. That's the same number the show has done every week but one so far in 2021.
Year-over-year, SmackDown was up 0.2 percent in viewership, so almost identical. It drew the same overnight rating in 18-49 as one year ago this week and was up 50 percent in 18-34.
