In the lead-up to WrestleMania, television audiences in Canada have jumped dramatically from the same period one year ago.
Earlier this week, Sports Business Journal reported on WWE’s performance in the U.S. and cited year-over-year increases of nine percent for Raw, eight percent for SmackDown, and five percent for NXT.
In Canada, the viewership growth in the month of March was multiple of those experienced in the U.S.
For March 2023, Raw averaged 369,500 viewers on Sportsnet 360 which represents a 39 percent increase over March 2022 in the lead-up to WrestleMania 38.
This was highlighted by the March 20 edition of Raw which did just over 408,000 viewers and was the most-watched sports program that night in Canada with Raw’s largest audience in years in the country.
To add context, the most-watched Raw of the year in 2022 was the night after WrestleMania 38 which averaged 348,900 viewers on SN 360 – an audience number that was topped in three of the four weeks in Match 2023.
The growth has extended to Friday Night SmackDown where the show averaged 252,300 viewers over the past month and experienced a year-over-year increase of 43 percent from March 2022.
The high point over the past month for SmackDown occurred on March 10 when the show exceeded 300,000 viewers on the Canadian network.
This year’s WrestleMania promotion has featured a prominent positioning of Canadian stars Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens following a very successful Elimination Chamber event last month in February. Both were in prominent matches one year ago, as well, with Owens headlining the first night of WrestleMania against Steve Austin and Zayn involved in a celebrity match-up with Johnny Knoxville.
The spike in Canadian viewership did not extend to NXT, which averaged 68,000 viewers in March, which is down three percent from the episodes in March 2022 – both years included a Roadblock special.
