WWE Friday Night SmackDown Suffers Huge Ratings Drop
Is a lack of audience starting to hurt the blue brand?
Showbuzz Daily are reporting that Friday Night SmackDown on FOX suffered quite a substantial ratings drop this week, as last night's episode drew an average of 2.374 million viewers.
Last week's edition of the blue show scored a decent 2.563 million viewers on average. However, it now looks as though either the lack of live audience or dearth of excitement surrounding one of the company's biggest events of the year has started to eat away at SmackDown's ratings.
This week's average score of 2.374 million was a 7.6% drop from the previous week's and this is also the lowest SmackDown rating of 2020.
With a large chunk of the show being dedicated to a re-run of Triple H and Roman Reigns' WrestleMania 32 WWE title clash and the majority of the in-ring work still jarring slightly due to a lack of crowd interaction, SmackDown now faces an uphill battle to try and improve on that score on the last stop before WrestleMania 36 next week.
Will the inclusion of John Cena and a face-to-face confrontation between Universal Champion Goldberg and one-time challenger Roman Reigns be enough to boost the number before the Showcase of the Immortals?
Anything beats watching Reigns getting booed out of AT&T Stadium again, I suppose.