WWE Raw ratings steady with last week, big decline in third hour
There was both good and bad news related to the Raw ratings last night.
The show averaged 2.53 million viewers, identical to last week. Based on the standards of the last few months, it’s a good number, really behind only Raw Reunion and the show after SummerSlam as far as episodes since April.
It’s even impressive because it went head-to-head with the MTV Video Music Awards, and the first two hours were strong. It beat the VMAs, which averaged 1.93 million viewers.
Raw was fifth for the night on cable, trailing only news shows on MSNBC and Fox News. It was down 11 percent from the same week last year.
The bad news was a huge third hour decline. Hour one in particular was very strong, and hour two had a small gain, but not at the level of prior weeks. But there was a 16 percent drop from hour two to hour three, which even by 2019 standards was unusually high.
The drop was 12 percent in women 18-49, 15 percent in men 18-49, there was no drop in teenage girls and a 21 percent drop in hour three among teenage boys. There was an 18 percent drop among those over 50.
The second to third drop was the seventh worst of all-time.
The third hour was built around Sasha Banks vs. Natalya, Cedric Alexander vs. Cesaro, and AJ Styles vs. Braun Strowman for the United States title.
The three hours were:
- 8 p.m. 2.64 million viewers
- 9 p.m. 2.69 million viewers
- 10 p.m. 2.26 million viewers