EA’s Weekly SmackDown Live YouTube Report (11/6/18)

As we all know, social media and other outlets have become a huge means of drawing in interaction and viewers for WWE. Most people will point to television ratings like they did during the Monday Night Wars in the late 1990’s, however that can be skewed with so many various means of watching today that do not include cable television.

As you’ve become accustomed to, here is this week’s SmackDown Live YouTube Report (2:30PM EST, 11/8/18):

1. Paige reveals the SmackDown Women’s Survivor Series Team – 931k views
2. Rey Mysterio vs. Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas – 850k views
3. Samoa Joe vs. Jeff Hardy to qualify for Survivor Series – 837k views
4. Daniel Bryan and The Miz are named Survivor Series co-captains – 835k views
5. The New Day vs. The Usos to be named Survivor Series captains – 493k views
6. Nikki Cross accepts Becky Lynch’s challenge – 484k views
7. Becky Lynch responds to Ronda Rousey’s words from RAW – 461k views

After last week’s SmackDown Live YouTube Report saw multiple clips reaching the million view mark, this week it only takes 900k-plus to top our list. Really, in order to have any spot on this list, it was related to Survivor Series in some fashion as the company quickly has to prepare with just over a week remaining. So sliding into number one this week is SmackDown General Manager Paige revealing that the blue brand will be represented by Asuka, Naomi, Sonya Deville, Carmella and Charlotte Flair (should she finally accept) at Survivor Series.

Coming in second this week is Rey Mysterio, who has held between 800k and a million since his full-time return back at SmackDown 1000. This was easily the most anticipated match on the show, as WWE gave fans a quintessential “dream match” that also saw Mysterio earn his spot at Survivor Series. Again, that was the main theme of the evening with another match to determine a spot on SmackDown’s squad coming in third, the main event in which Samoa Joe qualified.

At fourth this week is the reveal of the Men’s SmackDown team captains, as Daniel Bryan takes a big slide from last week when he drew over a million views in a WWE Title Match against AJ Styles. More captains are named at number five, this time through tag team action as The Usos and The New Day give another superb showing. Ultimately, does it really matter who is named team captain? Does anybody care? I don’t think they do.

We see a long-awaited debut at the sixth spot this week, the follow-up match to the promo by SmackDown Women’s Champion Becky Lynch as Nikki Cross rejoins SAnitY, but loses to ‘The Lass Kicker’. On a week of taped WWE programming, I think the number six clip is a perfect example of what spoilers can do for viewership on television and other platforms like YouTube. This was a debut by a Superstar that’s quite popular in the NXT circles and with that fan base, yet the clip can’t even pull 500k views. Certainly a disappointment, but like the performance of the promos by Rousey and Lynch. It’s a shame they couldn’t have found a way to get these two actually in the same place/room/ring for some of their brief build to Survivor Series because the YouTube views would be a much different story.

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