WWE Raw ratings bounce back strong after football season
Raw, built around who would get the Royal Rumble title shot at Brock Lesnar and with a heavy emphasis on Vince McMahon and John Cena, had a strong post-football bounce-back and averaged 2.72 million viewers on Monday night
The audience was up 17 percent from last week against the college football championship game, and also the audience held up stronger than usual for all three hours. It was the best number for the show since September 10, right before the NFL took away a good percentage of the audience.
Raw was second for the night on cable to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, which did 3.35 million viewers, beating out everything on Fox News.
Still, it is a 16 percent drop from the 3.22 million viewers the “bounce-back” show did in 2018, so there is still considerable year-to-year erosion even with the big increase from the last several weeks.
The three hours were:
- 8 p.m. 2.78 million viewers
- 9 p.m. 2.78 million viewers
- 10 p.m. 2.610 million viewers
Dave Meltzer is the founder and lead writer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the weekly constant when it comes to news and reviews in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts for more than 40 years. Dave also co-hosts Wrestling Observer Radio with Bryan Alvarez and had had bylines for The National, Yahoo Sports, MMA Fighting and others.