John Cena's WWE Return Helps Raw Rating Against Big NBA Game

Despite many wrestling writers predicting that Monday night's deciding NBA Playoffs game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Golden State Warriors would dramatically impact WWE's viewership for RAW this week, WWE's flagship show held relatively steady compared to the week before.

The May 30th edition of RAW finished the night averaging 3.229 million viewers. Last week's show came in with an average of 3.269 million viewers. The NBA Playoffs game drew the largest rating for a cable television NBA postseason game in history with 15.996 million viewers.

However, recent months have shown that wrestling ratings are less affected by head to head sports competition than ever before due to their being far less casual fans (who might tune out) of the product now than in the past.

RAW's three hours broke down as follows:

Hour One: 3.282 million viewersHour Two: 3.324 million viewersHour Three: 3.081 million viewers

Also interesting to note is that despite the competition from the NBA, all three hours of RAW held above the three million viewers mark.

RAW was the third most watched show on cable television Monday evening, being defeated by the aforementioned Golden State Warriors versus Oklahoma City Thunder NBA Playoff game (15.996 million viewers) and the Inside The NBA post-game show (6.882 million viewers). In the 18-49 age group demographic, RAW also finished third for the night, also trailing the playoff game and post-game show in that demo. The final cable broadcast rating came in at a 2.19.