WWE News: Raw records lowest viewership ratings for 2018
What's the story?
WWE has had difficulties with their viewership ratings in the past but after the WrestleMania, the Greatest Royal Rumble and BackLash, the viewership ratings for Raw on the fallout show of Backlash were the lowest of 2018.
The May 7th episode of Raw averaged 2.689 Million viewers, which was down by 12.3% from last week's 3.066 Million viewers.
In case you didn't know...
This week's episode of Monday Night Raw saw the fallout from the Backlash pay-per-view. Roman Reigns moved on after defeating Samoa Joe and competed in a qualifying match for the Men's Money in the Bank Ladder Match against Finn Balor and Sami Zayn.
Finn won the match in the main event, and joined Braun Strowman as the two men qualified from Raw for the bout.
The show also saw Ember Moon qualify for the Women's Money in the Bank Ladder Match.
The heart of the matter
Raw drew only 2.689 million viewers on average during this week's show. The first hour of the show had 2.788 million viewers, 2.731 million viewers in the second hour and 2.549 million viewers in the final hour of the show.
The viewership is down 12.3% from the last week's show which averaged 3.066 Million viewers. The last time WWE had viewership worse than this week's, was on the 11th of December last year, which had 2.684 million viewers.
Raw was up against stiff competition and came in 5th for the night on Cable, after two airings of the NBA playoffs. They came in 5th in the 18-45 demographic, after the NBA playoffs which recorded 9 million Viewers across both airings and Love and Hip-Hop: Atlanta.
What's next?
The decrease in viewership is expected after the end of WrestleMania season. WWE will look to work on increasing their viewership again, heading into the Money in the Bank pay-per-view.
Author's take
The show's fall in viewership could be because of any one of a number of reasons. The past month has seen three pay-per-view size events in WrestleMania, The Greatest Royal Rumble, and Backlash.
Not to mention, the disappointing quality of shows from the latter two caused viewers to lose interest in the product.
Also, the excessive amount of wrestling may have taken the viewers to a level of saturation when it comes to wrestling content for a while.