WWE News: Monday Night Raw sees viewership increase following Gauntlet Match

What’s the story?

This week’s episode of WWE Monday Night Raw was far from the norm and the viewership showed.

The February 20th edition of Raw was watched by an average 3.283 million viewers and was up nearly 200,000 viewers from last week’s average of 3.105 million.

In case you didn’t know...

The Gauntlet Match featuring the men who’ll compete in the Elimination Chamber kicked off Monday Night Raw and lasted through the first two hours.

After Braun Strowman won the match, the rest of the show devoted time to the Women’s Division and featured an interview with Asuka as well as a 6-woman tag team match that saw Sasha Banks, Bayley, and Mickie James defeat Raw Women’s Champion Alexa Bliss and the members of Absolution.

The heart of the matter

The following are the hourly breakdowns for the February 20th edition of Raw per ShowBuzzDaily:

Hour one: 3.518 million

Hour two: 3.509 million

Hour three: 2.821 million

The shift in viewership from hour one to hour two can move drastically depending on the segment, match or level of promotion for a particular show. For this week’s episode, the gauntlet match was the biggest match announced for the show and the viewership remained consistent for the first two hours.

However, the program experienced a massive drop in viewers which resulted in 688,000 viewers not sticking around for the conclusion of the program.

What’s next?

The last Raw-exclusive pay-per-view planned for 2018 will be the Elimination Chamber and will take place this Sunday, February 25th.

The show will emanate from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada and will also feature two Elimination Chamber matches.

Author’s take

The consensus amongst fans following this episode of Raw was that the show was fantastic primarily due to the focus on in-ring action.

Hopefully, WWE can continue to create exciting shows with a focus on wrestling going forward.