Final ratings are in for this past Friday's episode of SmackDown. The show averaged 2.018 million viewers on Fox, down 4.9 percent from the previous week.
It's the second-lowest audience SmackDown has drawn since January
The main reason for the drop would have to be SmackDown going against night two of the NFL Draft, which averaged about six million viewers between the three different channels it aired on. The SmackDown episode was headlined by a high-stakes Universal Championship match where Daniel Bryan put his SmackDown career on the line and lost to Roman Reigns.
SmackDown finished in its usual last place among network television programming in total viewers.
In the 18-49 demo, SmackDown drew a 0.49 rating, down 9.3 percent from the previous week. That led all of network TV but trailed ESPN's coverage of the NFL Draft. The draft drew a 0.91 rating in the 18-49 demo on ESPN, which is a monstrous number in that demo for a Friday night time slot.
In 18-34, SmackDown drew a 0.30 rating, down 6.3 percent from the previous week. That also led the networks but was way behind NFL Draft coverage on ESPN, which drew a 0.70 in that category.
Year-over-year, the numbers held up pretty well, all things considered. SmackDown's viewership was up 7.1 percent from the same week last year. It was down two percent in 18-49. The 18-34 number was actually up 50 percent year-over-year, so that would mean the audience is skewing younger.
Here's a look at last week's ratings for all four major wrestling shows:
- WWE Raw: 1.774 million viewers (0.49 in 18-49, 0.23 in 18-34)
- WWE NXT: 744,000 viewers (0.22 in 18-49, 0.11 in 18-34)
- AEW Dynamite: 889,000 viewers (0.33 in 18-49, 0.16 in 18-34)
- WWE SmackDown: 2.018 million viewers (0.49 in 18-49, 0.30 in 18-34)
