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What's the story?
With the Superstar Shakeup causing many in WWE to leave Monday Night Raw, the Go-Home show for the Greatest Royal Rumble couldn't hold fans attention.
The April 23 edition of Monday Night Raw averaged 3.104 million viewers and was down more than 500,000 viewers from last week's average of 3.622 million.
In case you didn't know
After starting the show with a tribute to the late Bruno Sammartino, Raw focused its attention on building up the Greatest Royal Rumble pay-per-view.
The biggest matches on the show were Chad Gable vs. Jinder Mahal and the 10-Women tag team match which saw The Riott Squad, Alexa Bliss and Mickie James take on Sasha Banks, Bayley, Ember Moon, Nia Jax and Natalya in the main event.
The Heart of the matter
The following is the hourly breakdown for April 23 edition of Raw:
Hour 1: 3.283 million
Hour 2: 3.210 million
Hour 3: 2.819 million
The NBA Playoff games dominated cable last night, but the game between the Housten Rockets and the Minnesota Rockets was the game that started the same time Raw did.
Raw's viewership in the first hour was the lowest since February and down big from last week's first hour which also went up against the NBA Playoffs.
The second hour lost 73,000 viewers, but the third hour dropped by 391,000 viewers.
Aside from the focus on the Greatest Royal Rumble, most of Raw was filled with tag team matches. The only singles matches on the show were Elias versus Bobby Roode and Gable vs. Mahal.
What's next?
With the Greatest Royal Rumble taking place this Friday, the viewership has a good chance to increase next week.
There are several title changes expected for the show and the fallout from the show will beneficial to Raw's standing in the ratings.
Author's take
Raw didn't have much interesting wrestling on TV this week, but it would be easy to guess that they wanted to take it easy in preparation for the big pay-per-view.
But its doubtful Raw's viewership will reach the some of the same heights they did during WrestleMania season
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