What’s the story?
As reported by Cageside Seats, this Monday night’s episode of Raw witnessed a major dip in viewership with a figure of just 3.11 million compared to the 3.61 viewers who tuned up to Raw last week.
In case you didn’t know…
The biggest draw of this week’s Raw was supposed to be an appearance by Goldberg and he did not disappoint. ‘The Myth’ intervened in a segment involving WWE Universal Champion Kevin Owens and his ‘best friend’ Chris Jericho as they were in the ring discussing a possible WrestleMania match between them.
Even as Goldberg accepted Brock Lesnar’s challenge for a match at WrestleMania 33, Owens mocked him by calling it a perfect undercard match for KO-Mania 2. This led to the WCW legend throwing a challenge to K.O. for a title match at Fastlane. While Kevin Owens was not at all up for it, ‘Y2J’ ended up accepting the match on his behalf.
The heart of the matter
An hourly breakdown of the viewership numbers shows a maximum of 3.33 million viewers during the first hour of the show. However, it dipped to 3.16 million in the second and worse still at 2.84 million in the final hour.
One of the reasons why last week’s Raw recorded a year-best viewership of 3.61 million was the fact that it was the Royal Rumble fallout show. Moreover, the prospect of Triple H coming down to confront Seth Rollins also kept viewers hooked to the show and he eventually did turn up as well.
This week’s figures, though, were hurt by the WWE’s failure to provide a concrete update on Rollins’ injury and the status of his match against Triple H at WrestleMania 33. To add to it, yet another main event centring on Roman Reigns seems to have put the viewers off, too.
What next?
With Goldberg having fetched himself a title shot at Fastlane, the possibility of him making more appearances on Raw has increased and it may augur well for the show’s viewership figures in the weeks to come.
Sportskeeda’s Take
The WWE should take a leaf out of the book of their other show, SmackDown Live, if they want Raw to garner better viewership on a consistent basis. They could also consider cutting down an hour from the show’s runtime in order to ensure better quality.
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