Thanks to having the Minnesota Vikings vs. New Orleans Saints NFL game as a lead-in, Friday night’s episode of SmackDown had its highest rating of the year. It was also the second-highest rating any WWE program has had since the premiere episode on FOX on October 4, 2019. The first hour averaged 4.097 million viewers, and the second hour averaged 2.574 million for an overall average of 3.336 million viewers. In the key 18-49 demo, the show drew a 0.95 rating. It should be noted these are overnight ratings, so not yet official, but the numbers do not usually differ significantly.
Knowing they would have a tremendous lead in WWE opened with Roman Reigns defending the Universal Championship against Kevin Owens in a steel cage match. The show then featured a Triple Threat Elimination Match for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship, Daniel Bryan against Jey Uso, and a main event Lumberjack Match, which saw Big E win the Intercontinental Championship from Sami Zayn.
This rating will have brought some festive cheer to everyone at WWE after Raw received its lowest-ever rating just two weeks ago. However, the 37% drop between hours one and two shows WWE still has work to do when they manage to get extra eyeballs on their product.
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