Monday Night RAW's viewership decreases slightly to start 2020

Monday Night RAW's first episode of the decade took place yesterday, January 6, and averaged 2.38 million viewers on USA Network. The show featured the return of WWE Champion Brock Lesnar, Big Show and two championship title matches and was down 55,000 viewers from last week's average of 2.43 million.

• Hour one: 2.550 million viewers
• Hour two: 2.409 million viewers
• Hour three: 2.195 million viewers

Source: Showbuzzdaily

Lesnar's appearance on RAW left fans bewildered as Paul Heyman announced that The Beast Incarnate would enter the Royal Rumble match and would not defend the WWE Championship he won in October.

Other notable moments from the show included the United States Championship match between Rey Mysterio and Andrade and the RAW Tag Team Championship match between The Viking Raiders, The OC and the Street Profits.

The main event featured a 6-man tag team match between Seth Rollins & AOP against Samoa Joe, Kevin Owens and The Big Show, which couldn't match the viewership from last week's third hour - which featured the critically panned wedding of Bobby Lashley and Lana.

RAW's viewership for the first episode of the year has been in decline since the program changed to the three hour format. Despite the downward trend, this year's first episode of RAW saw a slight increase of viewership.

The following chart shows the viewership average for every first episode of RAW since 2016:

• 2016: 3,575,000 million
• 2017: 3,047,000 million
• 2018: 2,865,000 million
• 2019: 2,324,000 million
• 2020: 2,386,000 million

RAW rose to the number one spot on cable for the first time since Monday Night Football began, beating out Love & Hip Hop on VH1 and the LendingTree Bowl game between Louisiana and Miami (Ohio) on ESPN.