WWE News: ‘Monday Night Raw’ Ratings See Huge Drop In Viewership
The ratings for this week’s Monday Night Raw are in and everyone knows that the summer is often slow for television viewership on any network, but this is different. WWE is almost always presenting new programming as they continue to bring forth live shows each and every week. Other shows are usually on hiatus during the summer or just churning out reruns for three or four months. That adds to the disappointment for WWE as this week’s Raw saw a huge drop in its ratings.
Monday night’s show started out with a bang as Kurt Angle came out to address a situation with Brock Lesnar which Inquisitr reported about earlier in the day. With the talk of “contract issues,” changes were made to the card for Extreme Rules next month and new matches are needing to be made.
Obviously, there were a lot of wrestling fans who weren’t overly interested in what was being presented this week and tuned into something else. Wrestling Inc. is reporting that viewership for this week’s episode of Raw brought in 2.663 million viewers which is down from last week’s 2.903 viewers.
Last week’s viewership was the best that Raw had brought in since April and it was expected that a main event of Seth Rollins vs. Dolph Ziggler would do the same this week, but it didn’t come close.
Here are the ratings for each hour of Monday Night Raw:
- First hour – 2.597 million
- Second hour – 2.679 million
- Third hour – 2.714 million
Obviously, the ratings picked up as the night went on and the numbers don’t seem awful, but they aren’t great when compared to last week. Here are the ratings for each hour of Monday Night Raw from June 18, 2018:
- First hour – 3.001 million
- Second hour – 2.975 million
- Third hour – 2.734 million
As you can see, last week’s Raw did the exact opposite of this week as viewership declined as the night went on. This week, WWE fans obviously were more thrilled about the content later in the night and especially for Dolph Ziggler vs. Seth Rollins for the WWE Intercontinental Title.
While it’s not the lowest rating of the year, it certainly isn’t a good sign for the company.
Monday Night Raw finished the night in fifth place on cable as it landed behind a number of political shows. It did come in No. 3 overall in the 18-49 demographic as Love & Hip-Hop and Basketball Wives finished ahead of it. WWE isn’t going to be overly concerned just yet with this drop in ratings, but it is something that can’t be ignored.
