Friday’s episode of WWE SmackDown saw a fairly steep decline in its 18-49 demo against stiff competition from two NBA play-in games.
With figures courtesy of Wrestlenomics, the April 19th show garnered a total viewership of 2,333,000, a dip of 7% compared with the post-WrestleMania episode on April 12th.
That figure is the lowest total audience for SmackDown since March 29th.
A larger weekly percentage decline occurred in the demo, with a drop of 17% from a rating of 0.76 to 0.63 — also the lowest figure in that metric since the March 29th episode.
The show still topped network television for the night. The NBA games were shown on ESPN and TNT. Viewing figures for the New Orleans Pelicans vs. Sacramento Kings and Miami Heat vs. Chicago Bulls games were not immediately available.
The PFL card on ESPN began at 9:30 p.m. ET and averaged 454,000 viewers and 0.15 in the demo.
In Canada, SmackDown averaged 226,800 viewers and 84,600 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360, which represented decreases of nineteen and fifteen percent respectively from the prior week. SmackDown was only behind coverage of the Toronto Blue Jays vs. San Diego Padres in terms of sports programming on Friday.
