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What’s the story?
This week’s edition of Monday Night Raw saw a slight dip in the viewership despite some of the big matches and segments announced.
The July 24, 2017 episode of RAW averaged 3.067 million viewers; down 86,000 from last week’s episode on July 17, 2017.
In case you didn’t know...
Hour 1 of Raw featured the announcement of the Fatal-4-Way match for the Universal Championship as well as a No Disqualification Match between Finn Bálor and Elias Samson.
Hour 2 of Raw saw Big Cass fight Enzo Amore once again as well as an impromptu match between Nia Jax and Emma; where Jax debuted her new finisher.
The final hour of Raw featured the number one contender’s match between Bayley and Sasha Banks and Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose teaming up to take on The Miztourage.
The heart of the matter
The following is the hourly breakdown for the viewership of this week’s episode of Raw.
Hour 1: 3.156 million
Hour 2: 3.129 million
Hour 3: 2.917 million
The change from hour 1 to hour 2 resulted in 27,000 fans signing off following the big announcement from Kurt Angle regarding the Universal Championship match at SummerSlam.
Hour 3 saw the biggest dip in viewers with 212,000 fans tuning out despite the number one contenders match and the semi-Shield reunion that took place.
What's next?
Starting with the announcement of the Universal Championship match at SummerSlam may have been a bad call considering how most fans wanted to know what the decision would be.
Most fans thought that the two matches that occurred in the final hour of Raw were good, but the drop in viewership suggest that most people weren’t interested.
However, the viewership may increase next week following some big announcements for next Monday.
Author’s take
Despite a slight decrease in viewership, the consensus amongst fans has been that Raw has been putting out better programming.
The WWE has announced a triple threat match between the challengers for the Universal Championship as well as an appearance by Brock Lesnar, so the viewership might rise following next week’s show.
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