WWE News: Smackdown Live viewership gains a boost

What's the story?

This week's Smackdown Live, featuring a triple threat WWE Championship match between Kofi Kingston, AJ Styles and Sami Zayn and the coronation of new Smackdown Tag team Champions garnered 1.931 million viewers.

According to Showbuzz Daily, this viewership rating is up 5.3% from last week's episode, which attracted only 1.833 million viewers.

In case you didn't know

Daniel Bryan and Rowan defeated The Usos to win the vacant Smackdown Tag team Championship on this week's edition of Smackdown Live. The show also had Mustafa Ali taking on Andrade and a tag team battle between the team of Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose and that of Ember Moon and Carmella.

In the main event, Kofi Kingston successfully retained the WWE Championship in a triple threat match against Sami Zayn and AJ Styles of RAW, courtesy of the newly introduced 'Wildcard Rule'.

The heart of the matter

This week's Smackdown Live drew the third lowest viewership of the year and the third lowest viewers for a non-holiday first-run show in Smackdown history. Wrestlinginc highlighted that Smackdown ranked #11 in cable viewership on Tuesday, with the NCIS on CBS at the top of the ratings chart with an average of 11.660 million viewers.

Smackdown was #4 in the 18-49 age demographic, behind two NBA games and NHL Semifinal encounter between St. Louis and Dallas.

The minimal increase in the ratings of this week's show might have happened due to introduction of the 'Wildcard Rule', which allows certain RAW superstars to show up on Smackdown Live. AJ Styles, Sami Zayn and The Usos of the RAW roster did show up this week and only time will tell if the unpredictablility of this new 'rule' leads to further improvements in the ratings.

What's next?

Next week, Smackdown Live will be taking place at The O2 arena in London and then the taped edition of the show will be broadcasted to the United States viewers.