12 Ups & 13 Downs For WWE In 2019 (So Far)
8. Cratering Ratings
Monday Night Raw's 24 June episode drew 2.276 million viewers. That's a marginal increase on the previous week, but still roughly 600,000 down on WWE's 2018 average. A frightening statistic, as while WWE's audience has been in decline for well over a decade, the numbers have rarely plummeted so steeply.
Make no mistake: this is a catastrophe. Television might be a declining medium, and numbers might be down for all networks across the board, but to say ratings don't matter anymore is nonsense. Rights fees remain one of WWE's biggest sources of revenue. There may come a time when they don't need to rely on this money, but that isn't today, and while viewership figures are sliding for non-wrestling shows as well, WWE's numbers are cratering at a far quicker rate.
What's worse is that the promotion don't seem to have a clue how to ease the problem, with none of creative's wacky ideas yielding positive results beyond the short-term. A stronger product is the only thing that can rectify the shrinking figures and we can only hope that AEW's genesis spurs WWE to deliver that.