After being delayed due to Hurricane Irma, ratings for this week’s Raw are in — and despite the opening night of Monday Night Football on ESPN, ratings were essentially even from the previous week. They were also up over eight percent from the same week in 2016.
The show averaged 2.897 million viewers, down less than one percent from last week’s average of 2.916 million. In both total viewership and the 18-49 demo, Raw was second for the night on cable behind the two NFL games on ESPN.
Raw opened with 3.022 million viewers in hour one. It dropped slightly to 2.987 million for the second hour, then fell all the way to 2.699 million viewers for hour three. The drop of 10.7 percent from hour two to three was a worse drop than usual.
The first time matchup of John Cena facing Braun Strowman likely helped the ratings hold up as well as they did. NFL ratings in week one were also, for the most part, down from recent years. Year-over-year, Raw’s ratings were up for the fourth time in the last six weeks, which suggests the product itself is relatively hot right now.
Here’s a look at Raw numbers so far this year and how they compare to 2016: