5 ways RAW can boost its ratings

RAW is WWE's flagship show. In the late 1990s, RAW used to hit the 6 million viewers mark regularly. Nowadays, the red brand is struggling to reach even half of it consistently. After a peak during the Wrestlemania season, the ratings of RAW declines until Summerslam, where it sees a sudden spike. The viewership declines again after Summerslam until Wrestlemania season and the cycle repeats forever.

Owing to the ongoing National Football League (NFL) and the season premiere of various TV shows, this week's RAW stooped from 2.62 Million viewers to just 2.35 Million viewers, the lowest view count in recent history. This is 0.11 million lesser than the previous record of 2.46 Million viewers set on July 9th episode. Even the return of fan-favorite faction Shield and legends like the Undertaker, Mick Foley, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H is not helping. Vince McMahon would definitely not be happy with this.

With that being said, let us take a few steps WWE can take to boost it's flagship show's rating, especially during the NFL season.

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#5 Stop repeating the same formula

After SummerSlam 2018, almost every episode of RAW followed a set of rules - Roman Reigns comes to the ring to cut a promo. Someone interrupts him and makes an announcement for the main event. This segment is followed by some lower card matches that have no direction whatsoever. Elias and Ronda Rousey follows this. Finally, the shield gets involved in the main event.

People get bored of this formulaic approach. Before Extreme Rules 2018, there were 3 RAW episodes that literally had the same card - The June 18th, June 25th and the July 2nd episodes of RAW were very identical to one another.

Even though the Shield reunion is supposed to draw fans in, it has driven many fans out. RAW has become focused only on the Shield and the rest of the card is in limbo.

#4 More action

The gauntlet match was praised by critics.

One of the most watched episodes of RAW this year was the February 19th edition. This is because of the high paced action packed in that episode.

The 7 participants of the men's elimination chamber had a gauntlet match. Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns kicked the gauntlet match off. This gauntlet match saw some outstanding battles and Seth Rollins was the MVP here. The match was received with critical acclaim.

Nowadays, RAW is more of talking than wrestling. Before Summerslam, Seth Rollins' intercontinental open challenge was a solace but now, that is also subdued. WWE needs to pack more action its episodes to make the fans tune in.

#3 Emphasise factions

War games 2017 was held between the Undisputed era, Sanity and the team of Authors of Pain and Roderick Strong.

One of the biggest attractions of the attitude era was the factions. The nation of domination, the corporate ministry, and DX were special attractions. Even in NXT, factions play an important role. The undisputed era is the most entertaining thing on the entire NXT locker. Last year, NXT wargames saw three factions going on a war against one another.

However, on RAW, there is only one "credible" faction - Shield. The temporary alliance of Braun Strowman, Dolph Ziggler and Drew McIntyre will crack in the near future. WWE should bring more factions in RAW and have storylines focusing on them.

The battle between Shield and Evolution, Shield and The Wyatt Family were outstanding.

#2 Make the show 2 hours

"Bobby Lashley's sisters" was one of the worst segments of 2018.

More air time will give WWE more ads and hence more money. But this also means they have to fit in some filler segments. These filler segments are mostly bad and drag the quality of the show. Segments like Bobby Lashley's "sisters" and Alexa Bliss' version of "this is your life" are cringy and draw the fans away from the product.

Fans may find this boring and tune out rather than sitting through 3 hours of mediocrity.

#1 Create more main event players

RAW talents like Finn Balor and Kevin Owens are heavily underused.

This is the most obvious thing. RAW lacks main event caliber superstars. Only Roman Reigns, Braun Strowman, and Seth Rollins are the credible superstars in the RAW roster. WWE focused all their attention on Roman Reigns and forgot to create other stars.

During the attitude era, we had superstars like the Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Kane, Triple H, Shawn Michaels as regular main eventers. The main event scene had large potential and the writers made full use of it.

Today, WWE has the most stacked roster. However, talents like Finn Balor and Kevin Owens are in limbo rather than main eventing PPVs. WWE's policy of "all eggs in one basket" needs to be done with otherwise the ratings will continue plummeting.