Last Night's WWE Raw Proves A Ratings Success For Bobby Lashley's Title Win

Bobby Lashley's hunt for the WWE Championship kept audiences tuned in to WWE Raw.

by Andrew Pollard
Bobby Lashley WWE Title
WWE

With WWE taking a slightly different approach to last night’s Raw – as in, stringing the audience along with an episode-long main story – it looks as if this experiment worked well for Vince McMahon’s sports entertainment juggernaut.

The ratings are now in, and this week’s Raw outing averaged 1.88 million viewers. That’s nearly the same rating as last week – which had a natural post-Elimination Chamber bump - and it makes last night’s show the Raw episode that’s best held viewership this year.

Likely even more importantly, the most recent Raw was up 50% on the week-to-week figures where the 18-34 demographic is concerned – with the figure in that demo hitting 0.39.

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What is most encouraging for WWE is that the audience largely stuck with this episode from start to finish, even though audiences were served up two shoddy non-spectacles between Bobby Lashley and The Miz before Lashley finally claimed the WWE Championship at the end of the night.

Going against regular Raw trends, the audience went up from the first hour to the second, and the usual drop-off from Hour 1 to Hour 3 was the lowest seen in a long time, at just 5%. Is this a one-off? Does it mean fans are keen to see Lashley as WWE Champ? Is the overall Raw product finally doing enough to maintain interest? We'll have to wait and see.

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Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.