WWE News: Raw Viewership decreases, third hour absolutely crashes

What's the Story?

WWE's flagship program lost more of their audience against the NBA Playoffs, with a record-setting decrease in the third hour of the show.

The April 29 edition of Monday Night Raw averaged 2.16 million viewers and was down from last week's average of 2.37 million.

In Case You Didn't Know

WWE went head-to-head with the second round NBA playoff game between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Toronto Raptors and ended up losing considerable viewers.

The show was down 9 percent with over 200,000 viewers gone from the April 22 episode, but the biggest decline occurred in the final hour of the program, with only 1.898 million viewers tuning in.

The Heart of the Matter

The following is the hourly breakdown for the April 29 episode of Raw per ShowBuzzDaily:

Hour one: 2.336 million

Hour two: 2.241 million

Hour three: 1.898 million

Over 400,000 viewers stopped watching Raw by the third hour, and it was the first time that viewership dipped below 2 million viewers since 2018, during the Christmas Eve and New Years Eve episodes.

Raw was down 29.6 percent from the April 30, 2018 episode which averaged 3.06 million viewers for the Greatest Royal Rumble post-show.

Alexa Bliss started the first hour announcing the Men's Money in the Bank Ladder match participants, which lead to the opening match with Braun Strowman & Ricochet against Baron Corbin & Drew McIntyre.

The second hour of the show featured The Miz vs. Bobby Lashley, The Viking Raiders vs. The Lucha House Party and Bliss revealing the Women's Money in the Bank Ladder match participants.

The third hour of Raw featured another Firefly Funhouse segment with Bray Wyatt and the contract signing between AJ Styles and the Universal Champion, Seth Rollins.

What's Next?

WWE will probably lose even more viewers next week as Raw goes up against two NBA playoff games.

The Milwaukee Bucks-Boston Celtics game starts an hour before Raw, while the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets game will start in the second hour of the show.