What’s the story?
The viewership numbers for this year’s post-WrestleMania 33 Raw episode are in. While the numbers are strong overall, they’re down from the ones from last year’s Raw after WrestleMania 32.
In case you didn’t know...
Over the years, the post-WrestleMania episode of Raw has become one of the biggest shows of the year for the WWE.
The show is typically filled with surprises including special matches, returning and debuting Superstars as well as other announcements. In addition, WWE has touted this Raw as one of the most unique shows of the year due to the unorthodox crowd that is in attendance.
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The heart of the matter
This year’s post-WrestleMania Raw drew 3.767 million viewers overall which is up from the 3.292 million that the WrestleMania go-home show received.
While that growth in numbers from week to week is significant, the 3.767 million viewers figure is down from last year’s post-WrestleMania Raw which had 4.09 million viewers. Even with the downtick in overall viewers, however, last night’s Raw was still the number one show on cable.
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To further break down last night’s numbers, hour one drew 3.826 million viewers, hour two drew 3.893 million viewers, and hour three dropped a smidge clocking in at 3.583 million viewers.
The impact
Knowing Vince McMahon and the WWE brass, these numbers must alarm them. Last night’s Raw featured more surprises than usual, including the return of Finn Balor, the debut of The Revival, Kurt Angle being announced as the new Raw General Manager, plus a segment featuring Vince McMahon himself.
Further, Brock Lesnar was on the show as Universal Champion and the newly returning Hardy Boyz were featured in in-ring competition as they defended their Raw Tag Team Championships against Gallows And Anderson.
With all that happening on one episode of Raw, one could imagine that the viewership would have been higher than last year.
That said, each Raw after WrestleMania goes head to head with the NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship game. This year’s championship game pitted two number one seeds with large fan bases against each other and could have contributed to the unnatural post-WrestleMania Raw rating for the WWE.
Author’s note
If I’m WWE, I’m not concerned by this viewership report but I certainly am deflated because of it.
Coming off of a successful WrestleMania and knowing that they had so many aces up their sleeve for the post-Mania Raw must have gotten them excited. Knowing that Lesnar, Angle, Vince, Hardy’s, The Revival, and Finn Balor all were available for the show certainly must have increased their expectations for what the viewership number would be.
Add to that the fact that the show was coming off the retirement of a legendary performer in the Undertaker and it wouldn’t surprise me if expectations raised even higher because of that. That said, I’ll spin this in a positive fashion.
The WWE executed the show flawlessly. All of the returns fit, the debuts popped, and potential landscapes for upcoming stories were created. Not only were they created, they were interesting too.
Though the overall number is down year over year, enough people saw a tremendous show last night and have set a base for WWE to grow numbers as the WrestleMania hype dies down.
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