WWE News: Raw in London sees Slight Increase in Viewership

What's the Story?

Monday Night Raw's viewership has been on a downward trend since the Superstar Shakeup, but this week's numbers could be the start of the viewership going back up.

The May 14 edition of Raw averaged 2.741 million viewers and was up 52,000 viewers from the May 7 episode.

In case you didn't know

Raw kicked off with Roman Reigns calling out Jinder Mahal for costing him his Money in the Bank qualifying match and was the biggest story of the show.

The biggest matches on the show were the Men's and Women's Money in the Bank qualifying matches and the Intercontinental Championship match between Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens.

The heart of the matter

The following is the hourly breakdown for the May 14 episode of Raw per ShowBuzzDaily:

Hour 1: 2.903 million

Hour 2: 2.692 million

Hour 3: 2.628 million

The NBA Conference Finals Game between the Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets dominated cable for the night, while Raw was number four in cable viewership due to the first hour of the program.

The second hour of Raw lost 211,000 viewers as fans presumably switched over to the NBA Playoff Game which started at the same time as Raw's broadcast.

The third hour of the show suffered a relatively small loss of 64,000 viewers.

Impact

Since Raw emanated from London, wrestling fans had access to spoilers for the show, but that didn't have a negative effect on the program.

The Intercontinental Championship match was the best part of the show for many fans and saw Rollins continue to build his resume to hopefully take on Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship.

Author's Take

Rollins' Intercontinental Open Challenge held the show together and likely kept fans invested in the first hour of the program.

Hopefully next week Rollins can try and top his incredibly impressive work.