WWE News: Pre-July 4th SmackDown Live Draws Lowest Viewership Of The Year (7/3/18)

With the United States ready to celebrate the Day of Independence on July 4th, the numbers for this week’s pre-Fourth of July episode of WWE’s SmackDown Live are now in and it marks a new 2018 low for the program.

Despite an edition of the blue brand that featured a return to the ring from WWE Champion AJ Styles, Team Hell No in the main event against The Usos and an intergender showdown between James Ellsworth and Asuka, SmackDown Live only drew a 2.013 this week. That’s the lowest rating for the show since the Halloween episode last year and a decrease of 5.7%.

SmackDown Live was also knocked out of its spot at the top of the 18-49 demographic Cable Top 150 rankings, breaking a weeks-long trend. Coming in at number one this week was FIFA World Cup action on FOX Sports 1, followed by the blue brand at number two. Third this week was USA Network’s Chrisley Knows Best, then more FIFA World Cup coverage at four and finally TNT’s Animal Kingdom fifth.

Here’s a look at the last four weeks of ratings for SmackDown Live:

• June 12th: 2.183
• June 19th: 2.315
• June 26th: 2.135
• July 3rd: 2.013

Source: Showbuzz Daily

EA’s Take: A pretty rough week overall for WWE programming with the holiday seemingly taking most people’s attention. This week’s episode of RAW was brutally bad, in my opinion, but SmackDown Live put forth a much better effort most likely to try and thwart a terrible ratings drop. So while this now marks a three week trend for the blue brand, it’s really difficult to base the product off of the numbers this week. Everything was down, even on YouTube and by a lot for SmackDown Live. At least they’re giving a much more consistent showing on a weekly basis in terms of how entertaining the show is. I don’t think many fans could tell me that RAW has been better lately without me laughing in their face.

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