WWE Raw Viewership Holds Steady Against Competition From NBA And NHL Playoffs

This week's episode of "WWE Raw" faced stiff competition from live sports, with NBA basketball playoffs coverage on TNT as well as the NHL hockey playoffs on ESPN 2. With that kind of opposition, you'd expect the Nielsen ratings for "Raw" to be down, and technically, they were, but realistically? The viewership was almost identical to last week. 

According to the reporting from the usual suspects at ShowBuzzDaily and Wrestlenomics, "Raw" averaged 1,815,000 viewers across all demographics (less than a 0.2% drop week over week), approximately 752,000 of which fell in the "key demo" most valued by advertisers, adults aged 18 to 49 (a 4% drop). The latter number translates to a 0.58 rating in the key demo, giving "Raw" fourth place among ShowBuzzDaily's rankings of the day's cable originals, with only the NBA coverage topping it.

For a bigger picture look, the Wrestlenomics Patreon page also compares the viewership across multiple demographics to the median number of the prior four weeks. By that metric, there wasn't much in the way of notable movement, with the biggest jumps being 7% in both directions: Up 7% from the median for women aged 18 to 49 and down 7% for adults aged 25 to 54.

Hour over hour, "Raw" was back to its usual pattern this week after an aberration last week where the show peaked in hour two. The first hour averaged 1,945,000 viewers with a 0.61 rating in the key demo and the second hour followed closely with 1,919,000 viewers and a 0.60 rating in 18 to 49, but the third hour saw a sharp drop to 1,582,000 viewers and a 0.52 key demo rating.