RAW Viewership suffers a considerable drop one night after Payback 2020

The episode of RAW after Payback 2020 was centered around the search for Drew McIntyre's WWE title challenger at Clash of Champions 2020. As a result, three qualifying matches were announced in advance and it led to a great main event on RAW between Randy Orton, Keith Lee, and Seth Rollins, where Orton walked out as the #1 contender for the WWE Championship.

According to Showbuzz Daily, the RAW after Payback 2020 drew a total of 1.896 million viewers - a 6.5% drop from the RAW after SummerSlam that drew 2.028 million viewers.

The first hour of the show drew 2.104 million viewers, but it continued to dip each hour, going to 1.882 million viewers in hour two and 1.703 million viewers by hour three. It was a continuous dip, which was a bit surprising considering that the show featured quite a sequence of interesting matches and segments.

Perhaps the two NBA Playoff games had to do with it, as they also ranked higher-up in terms of overall average ratings and the 18-49 demographic, where they scored 1.19 to WWE's 0.58.

The August 24th edition of RAW was the only episode since the post-WrestleMania RAW that managed to touch an average of over 2 million viewers.

Why are the RAW ratings dipping and fluctuating?

While there have been rumors that WWE isn't too bothered by the overall dip in ratings, there have been eyebrows raised about why the ratings for RAW keep fluctuating.

Drew McIntyre might be a great WWE Champion, but the reality is that the lack of crowds have played a role in deterring the overall ratings of RAW and SmackDown. It's not known when the crowds are going to return to WWE TV, but from the look of things, it won't be for another few months.

Until then, WWE is going to have to deal with the dipping ratings. One could argue that the product itself hasn't been too bad. Many superstars who never got opportunities on RAW have gotten the platform to shine, such as Apollo Crews, among others.