#2 Imbalance of star power
In 2016 when the draft happened, both the brands were balanced. They had an equal amount of star balance. RAW had Roman Reigns, Brock Lesner, Finn Balor, Seth Rollins, Goldberg and Chris Jericho to name a few and SmackDown Live had John Cena, AJ Styles, The Miz, Dean Ambrose, Randy Orton, Dolph Ziggler etc. The Rosters were very balanced. But, then there were many minor superstar shake-ups and in that course, SmackDown lost all its good stars. John Cena, The Miz, Dean Ambrose and Bray Wyatt moved to RAW.
Currently, SmackDown Live has very few stars like AJ Styles, Kevin Owens, Orton, and Nakamura. 2017 was doomed to SmackDown Live. Jinder Mahal’s lackluster run as the WWE Champion, Ziggler relinquishing the US Title and Randy Orton as a babyface, all of them have proved to be grave-diggers for SmackDown Live viewership.
A top AEW star just called one of his colleagues 'spoiled' and 'narcissistic' HERE.