WWE Raw finished second among cable programming on Monday with the rarity of the first hour being the lowest of the three.
The March 14th edition of Raw averaged 1,700,000 viewers and approximately 621,000 (0.47) in the 18-49 demographic, per Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics and Showbuzz Daily.
The show finished second on cable behind the NBA game between Denver and Philadelphia that averaged 1,619,000 viewers and 0.53 in 18-49 on ESPN. WWE raw beat out the late game between Milwaukee and Utah, which finished third.
Raw started off low with 1,668,000 viewers and 0.46 in 18-49. Excluding the two episodes on Syfy last month, it was the lowest overall viewership for the first hour of Raw for 2022.
The show grew to 1,755,000 and 0.49 in the second hour and finished with 1,678,000 and 0.48 in the third hour.
It is not unusual for the second hour of the show to be the highest, but it’s rare that the third hour outperforms the first.
The cause for the low first hour could be attributed to The Bachelor on ABC from 8-10 p.m. ET, which averaged 4,574,000 viewers and 1.11 in 18-49, which is a huge demo figure and dominated television on Monday night. Raw’s opening hour was down by twelve percent in overall viewers this week.
Overall viewership dropped by four percent this week, which was Raw’s lowest on the USA Network since January 17th. However, the 18-49 audience increased by five percent from last week’s episode.
Males 18-49 grew by 11.5 percent this week and adults 35-49 were up by three percent.
The 50+ audience dropped from 0.92 to 0.85 and contributed to the overall drop in viewership.
The numbers for Raw and SmackDown in Canada continue to be strong with Monday’s episode averaging 262,400 viewers and 135,900 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360 and increasing by seven percent in viewers this week. The show was third in viewers among sports programming on Monday night but was #1 in the demo.
The last two episodes of Raw were the highest for the series since August 2021 and followed this past Friday’s number for SmackDown, which was its highest this year.
