Coming off its most-watched episode since 2020, Friday Night SmackDown came back to its normal level this past week.
The September 30th edition of the show from Winnipeg averaged 2,207,000 viewers and approximately 704,000 (0.54) in the 18-49 demographic, according to Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics and Showbuzz Daily.
It was SmackDown’s lowest viewership average in September and fell 13% from last week’s big number and declined 14% in the 18-49 demographic.
After a major spike among adults 18-34 last week, the show dropped 32% in that demo this week while adults 35-49 were only down by 2%.
Despite the decline, SmackDown was the top-ranked network program on Friday and second on all of television behind the college football game between Washington and UCLA on ESPN. SmackDown ranked first in 18-49 and second in 18-34 against the other network shows.
The success of last week’s show was attributed to the clues surrounding the “White Rabbit” reveal that led audiences to expect the reveal at 9:23 p.m. ET of the program but only received another set of clues to keep the mystery going.
This week’s show featured a six-man tag main event, which was put together during the show with Drew McIntyre teaming with Kevin Owens & Johnny Gargano against Austin Theory & Alpha Academy.
In Canada, SmackDown averaged 181,500 viewers and 114,700 in the 25-54 demo (its highest in the demo since August 19th) and was up 28% in viewers and nearly doubled its demo figure from last week on Sportsnet 360. The show finished seventh among sports programming on Friday night in the country.
