Poor WWE Raw Rating Highlights Worrying Viewership Trend
WWE's Raw viewership has declined by 41% in just four years.
This week's WWE Raw posted an average viewership of 2.40 million across its three hours, broken down as the following:-
Hour one: 2.54 million
Hour two: 2.44 million
Hour three: 2.22 million
This was an increase of roughly 1% on the previous week's show. In the key 18-49 demographic, Raw finished 15th for the night with a 0.76 rating.
What's most worrying about this, as pointed out by Dave Meltzer in his Figure Four Online writeup, is the continued year-by-year decline in viewership. Here's how the post-Rumble Raw (traditionally one of the year's best-drawing episodes) has looked over the past few years:-
2016: 4.10 million
2017: 3.62 million
2018: 3.40 million
2019: 2.71 million
2020: 2.40 million
That means that this specific episode of Raw's viewership has declined by 41% in four years.
None of this is new information, of course, but it highlights a continued problem. Yes, consumers' viewing habits have changed immensely, with increasing volumes of fans watching Raw via DVR, YouTube clips, or other means, but television remains the company's biggest money-maker and the thing WWE management and TV execs worry about when making new deals. It's fortunate, then, that WWE's current deals are so lucrative.
It looks increasingly like this trend may never be reversed, sadly.