WWE News: Monday Night Raw viewership down following the Royal Rumble

What’s the Story?

Monday Night Raw followed up three quality shows from the WWE, but ultimately failed to retain viewers from the 25th Anniversary of the program.

The Jan. 29. 2018 episode of Raw averaged 3.394 million viewers and was down 1.136 million from last week’s show.

In Case You Didn’t Know

Raw shifted focus from the Royal Rumble fallout to the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view and had three qualifying matches for the Chamber match as well as a match between Asuka and Sasha Banks. Elias defeated Matt Hardy, Braun Strowman defeated Kane in a Last Man Standing match, and John Cena defeated Finn Bálor in the main event.

The Heart of the Matter

The following is the hourly breakdown of the Jan. 29 episode of Raw per Show Buzz Daily:

Hour one: 3.662 million

Hour two: 3.461 million

Hour three: 3.061 million

Raw dominated the Monday Night Cable ratings for the third week, but the viewership for the post-Royal Rumble pay-per-view saw a significant but expected a decline.

The second hour lost about 201,000 viewers from the first hour, but the biggest decline occurred in the third hour which saw a viewership drop of 400,000 despite the first-time match between Bálor and Cena.

Raw episodes that follow pay-per-views historically gain a spike in viewership, but the immense level of advertisement and the number of stars who appeared for Raw’s 25th Anniversary caused the flagship to receive a gargantuan boost in viewers.

What’s Next?

The WWE has a swarm of positivity following NXT Takeover, the Royal Rumble, and Raw despite the low viewership, so the show may be able to increase viewership going forward with consistency in show quality.

Author’s Take

WWE programming has been fantastic since NXT Takeover on Saturday and hopefully, this will be their standard going forward rather than being just a good week of shows.