WWE SmackDown Draws Highest Rating In 2 Years
John Cena = ratings boost. WWE knew that, you knew that. Everybody knew that!
Last week's episode of WWE SmackDown attracted the show's largest audience since Christmas Day 2020.
The 'Happy New Year' edition hauled in an average of 2.629 million viewers on FOX. Showbuzz Daily reports that this is the highest viewership SmackDown has posted since the 25 December 2020 episode, and is up 10.65% from the prior week's show (which pulled in 2.376 million).
It's noted that the Christmas 2020 show had some NFL lead-in, which likely boosted the overall number for that opening quarter hour. However, WWE didn't have that boost for last Friday's broadcast. Instead, they had one John Cena, and he proved to be quite the key demographic smash hit.
Cena wrestled his first televised match of the year by teaming with Kevin Owens to defeat The Bloodline's Roman Reigns and Sami Zayn. According to Wrestlenomics, his appearance meant a 0.64 rating in the 18-49 demo - that's up 16.36% from the previous week's 0.55 score, and made SmackDown the number one show on network TV for the week.
It's perhaps no surprise that Cena had such a positive impact on viewer interest. WWE's next challenge will be maintaining this momentum.