WWE Raw ratings hold up well against first week of NFL season

Last night’s Raw held up well against the first week of the NFL season, doing 2.74 million viewers, a drop of five percent from the prior week.

Last week’s number was against college football, but the NFL games did nearly double the audience on ESPN than college football did.

Any audience given current patterns that would be above 2.6 million viewers would have to be considered solid at this point.

ESPN ran a doubleheader, with the New York Jets blowout of the Detroit Lions doing 10.34 million viewers against the first two hours of Raw and part of hour three, while the last 52 minutes of Raw went against a Los Angeles Rams vs. Oakland Raiders game that did 9.61 million viewers.

Raw was seventh for the night on cable, trailing only the two games and news shows. It also beat out both FOX and CW programming.

It was a normal pattern with the first hour slightly the highest and a third-hour drop, but not a major drop.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 2.82 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.80 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.60 million viewers