WWE News: SmackDown Live viewership down for Halloween episode

What’s the story?

The Halloween Edition of SmackDown Live averaged 2.119 million viewers and was down 585,000 views from last week’s average of 2.669 million.

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The focus of this week’s episode was primarily to lay the groundwork for next week’s show and to fill the voids left in the men’s SmackDown Survivor Series team.

Shane McMahon announced that he would captain the team, which at the time only had Randy Orton confirmed. Bobby Roode and Shinsuke Nakamura were added to the team after they defeated their opponents leaving only one spot vacant for now.

The heart of the matter

This week’s episode of SmackDown Live had to compete with the NBA and game six of the World Series between the Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The basketball game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Milwaukee Bucks began at 7:00 PM, while game six of the Series began 20 minutes into SmackDown’s broadcast, during the match between Roode and Dolph Ziggler.

The 2.119 million viewers that SmackDown averaged this week was the lowest number of viewers the Blue Brand has reached since the June 13 episode, which averaged 2.072 million.

What’s next?

Next week’s episode will mark the first SmackDown in the month of November and will feature two matches that could change the Survivor Series card.

AJ Styles and Rusev will battle it out for the fifth spot on the SmackDown Survivor Series Team, while The Usos defend their Tag Team Championships against Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin.

Author’s take

The World Series will conclude this week, so SmackDown will only have to contend with the three NBA games scheduled for Tuesday, November 7th.

Two games will begin 30 minutes prior to the start of SmackDown, but one will begin 30 minutes into SmackDown’s broadcast.