WWE SmackDown Live Posts Highest Viewership In More Than Three Months
Road to WrestleMania, Kofi Kingston's surging popularity, interest in seeing a wrestling crowd that actually knew how to make noise, whatever the reason - SmackDown Live saw a marked improvement in TV viewership this week.
Tuesday night's broadcast from New Orleans averaged 2.269 million viewers. This amounts to SmackDown's largest audience since the November 13 broadcast, which did 2.312 million viewers.
While the rebound seems to indicate great interest in the product following a well-received Elimination Chamber pay-per-view (Raw's viewership was also up from prior weeks), the 2.269 million is still below what SmackDown averaged throughout 2018 (2.353 million).
Additionally, this week's broadcast was down 13 percent from what SmackDown did the same week one year earlier (2.613 million on February 20, 2018). But a rebound is a rebound, regardless.
Tuesday night's show saw the four recent NXT call-ups (Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Ricochet, and Aleister Black) again in action, as well as Mandy Rose upsetting Women's Champion Asuka, and the announcement that WWE Champion Daniel Bryan would be defending the belt against Kofi Kingston at Fastlane next month.
Tuesday night's broadcast from New Orleans averaged 2.269 million viewers. This amounts to SmackDown's largest audience since the November 13 broadcast, which did 2.312 million viewers.
While the rebound seems to indicate great interest in the product following a well-received Elimination Chamber pay-per-view (Raw's viewership was also up from prior weeks), the 2.269 million is still below what SmackDown averaged throughout 2018 (2.353 million).
Additionally, this week's broadcast was down 13 percent from what SmackDown did the same week one year earlier (2.613 million on February 20, 2018). But a rebound is a rebound, regardless.
Tuesday night's show saw the four recent NXT call-ups (Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Ricochet, and Aleister Black) again in action, as well as Mandy Rose upsetting Women's Champion Asuka, and the announcement that WWE Champion Daniel Bryan would be defending the belt against Kofi Kingston at Fastlane next month.
Written by Justin Henry
In addition to writing lists and commentaries for Cultaholic, Justin is also a features writer and interviewer for Fighting Spirit Magazine, and is co-author of the WWE-related book Titan Screwed: Lost Smiles, Stunners, and Screwjobs.
