What’s the story?
The Memorial Day Edition of Monday Night Raw reached one of its all-time lows last week, but the post-Extreme Rules Raw has bounced back in a big way. The June 5th edition of Raw averaged 2.994 million viewers. This marks a fifteen percent increase from the Memorial Day Raw.
In case you didn’t know...
The first hour of this week’s edition of Raw kicked off with an impromptu match between Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt and a confrontation between Samoa Joe and Paul Heyman.
The second hour of this week’s show featured Big Cass being attacked by an unknown assailant and The Miz’s Intercontinental Championship Celebration.
The final hour of Raw finished with a Women’s Championship match between Alexa Bliss and Nia Jax and the main event between Samoa Joe and Seth Rollins.
The heart of the matter
The following is the hourly breakdown of Raw’s viewership for this week:
Hour 1: 3.113 million
Hour 2: 3.110 million
Hour 3: 2.758 million
The overall viewership for this week’s Raw saw an increase of approximately 381,000 viewers from the Memorial Day Raw. However, the third hour saw a massive decrease with about 352,000 fans deciding not to stick around for the main event between Joe and Rollins.
The impact
The decrease in viewership from hour 1 to hour 2 was relatively small with no more than 3,000 viewers signing off. This could be attributed to the segment between Joe and Heyman and the fans sticking around to see if Brock Lesnar would make a surprise return to TV and cross paths with the number one contender.
The third hour of Raw typically has the biggest drop in viewership, but the decrease may be attributed to the lack of substantial matches and segments leading to the main event between The Kingslayer and The Samoan Submission Machine.
Author’s take
The increase in viewership is more than enough proof that fans are invested in this dream match between Lesnar and Joe. With Lesnar’s return to TV announced for next week’s Raw, viewership could increase even further.
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