This week’s episode of SmackDown Live saw the show post its highest viewership average in five weeks on the USA Network.
Going against the MLB All-Star Game, SmackDown averaged 2,293,000 viewers, which was a 5% increase over last week’s average and highest since June 19th. The show was promoted around the rematch between Shinsuke Nakamura and Jeff Hardy for the United States title and was coming off Sunday’s Extreme Rules show.
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Monday’s episode of Raw had a big increase of 16% with an average of 2,860,000 viewers over the three-hour program.
The show featured 3,118,000 viewers tuning in for the first hour, which is the first hour of Raw to top 3 million viewers since June 18th and the most watched hour of Raw since April 30th.
There was a drop to 2,859,000 viewers in the second hour and a subsequent dip to 2,622,000 viewers for the final hour that led to the three-way match with Bobby Lashley defeating Elias and Seth Rollins.
Raw went against coverage of the MLB Home Run Derby, which did 5,567,000 viewers on ESPN. The Home Run Derby was down 32% from last year, with the 2017 version averaging 8,167,000 viewers.
