What’s the story?
This week’s episode of Monday Night Raw saw a huge drop in viewership that set a record low for 2017. Raw’s overall viewership averaged at 2.696 million with more than 400,000 fans tuning out during the third hour.
In case you didn’t know...
This week’s episode of Raw hailed from the 02 Arena in London, England and focused on the development of the feud between The Miz and the Intercontinental Champion Dean Ambrose, Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman, and the tag team turmoil match.
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The show began with The Miz and Ambrose announcing themselves as co-General Managers for the night, the middle of Raw was mostly the Reigns-Strowman feud and tag team turmoil, while the show ended with a match between Ambrose and Bray Wyatt.
The heart of the matter
Hour 1 of this week’s Raw started with 2.827 million viewers tuning in. Then, hour 2 saw a slight bump from hour 1 with 2.845 million viewers. However, the biggest decline came in hour 3 when 400,000 people tuned out leaving the final hour of Raw with 2.417 million viewers.
The show’s overall viewership of 2.69 million viewers makes it the lowest viewed episode of Raw of the year, but the lowest viewed one since the brand split is still the September 26th show in 2016, which was up against the 2016 Presidential debate.
What’s next?
Viewership and ratings for Raw typically decrease after WrestleMania, but the competition they are facing with the NBA playoffs may cause a further decline.
The Western Conference Semi-finals game between the Golden State Warriors and the Utah Jazz began at 8 PM and may have been the deterrent that contributed to the massive dropout of viewers in the third hour.
Author’s take
The NBA Playoffs won’t be finishing up anytime soon and this will take its toll on the WWE as the weeks go by. With the playoffs progressing as they have been currently, there is a strong chance that fans will see a rematch from last year’s playoff series between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
If that rematch occurs then the intrigue that the NBA Playoffs naturally has might spike exponentially considering the series the two teams had last year. If the WWE have any creative ideas and concepts to boost interest and intrigue in their show, now’s the time to pull out all the stops.
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