SmackDown Live Outperforms Raw For Second Week In A Row

Despite a collective promise from the McMahon family (comprised of Vince, Shane, and Stephanie) and Triple H to shake up their product after listening to the WWE Universe, things still aren’t necessarily looking good for Raw.

This week SmackDown Live outperformed WWE’s flagship show for the second week in a row.

The New Year’s Day episode of SmackDown drew in 2.091 million views, which was above the 1.904 million viewers for the week prior. The New Year’s Eve edition of Monday Night Raw, however, drew 1.968 million views.

With the company almost openly addressing a vocal criticism of their product right now, it doesn’t look good for their flagship show to be playing catch up to the blue brand, let alone for two weeks in a row.

Although hardly indicative of a trend at this point in time, it would be shortsighted to ignore such an obvious contextual factor like New Year’s Eve. With people wanting to go out and celebrate as they ring in 2019, it’s understandable that this week’s show might have been hit because of it.

Couple that with people then potentially recovering from the night prior, and it could explain this week’s SmackDown live rating outperforming the red brand.

Alternatively, people might just be more willing to give SmackDown two hours of their time versus Raw’s three every week, and the ratings could be an early reflection of that.