WWE RAW Match Broke Record For Lowest Viewership In History

WWE RAW ran a show this week, and they had some stiff competition. The NFL is back, and they had quite a game to play at the same time as the longest running weekly episodic show in television history. It also made history in the process, but not in a good way.

Click here for our complete coverage of WWE RAW this week.

During the episode of WWE Raw on Monday, September 18th, a match went down that achieved the lowest viewership in the recorded history of the show. The episode faced competition from two NFL games, resulting in a decrease in overall viewership compared to the previous week, which had already set a record low before this week’s new record was established.

During Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted how Tommaso Ciampa and Giovanni Vinci’s match made WWE history, and not in a good way.

“This was against two football games, so the two football games combined did roughly the same, it was almost exact of what last week did with the one game on both ABC and ESPN, it was a bigger game last week, but this time it was two games, it was in the range of 22 million viewers. So 22,304,000 viewers. So very formidable competition and explains the ratings drop.”

“But Raw was up with younger viewers from the week before – 0.44 is, considering that competition, 0.44 is not bad. But, the flip side is that it was up higher with the younger viewers than last week, but it was down (overall), which means another drop in over 50, which is where your viewer total is generally determined by how many over 50 viewers because that’s the vast majority of the Raw audience, although it’s becoming less of the vast majority of the Raw audience since August, since SummerSlam.”

“So that’s continuing to drop, a lot of which is related to football, but there is football every single year, and the drop in over 50 viewers started before football, but it’s really accelerated in the last two weeks. Not as a surprise. So that was the situation there.”

“Raw had been ahead of last year’s numbers consistently, but the past couple of weeks, that has not been the case. Raw was the lowest… it was not the lowest first hour in history, but it was the lowest second hour, and the lowest third hour.”

“And the Ciampa match with Giovanni Vinci was the least-watched Raw match in history, with 1,192,000 viewers. So that was the basic situation there.”

That lowest rating ever actually excluding a “best of” show, but it still breaks the record of lowest watched live match in WWE history. Hopefully, they don’t repeat that record every week.

The NFL is incredibly popular, and WWE realizes that they are in competition with everything, including sleep. Only time will tell if this low viewership number goes on to hurt the push for either man involved.

What’s your take on WWE RAW breaking this bad record this week? Sound off in the comments to let us know what you think!