WWE News: SmackDown Rating Beats RAW Again, Gets Knocked Out Of Top 5 (1/1/18)

A look at this week’s ratings and ranking for SmackDown Live!

For the first time in a very, very long time last week we saw WWE’s SmackDown Live with a better rating than its counterpart, Monday Night RAW (check out last week’s SmackDown Live ratings). Of course, much of this was because RAW fell on Christmas Eve and with this week’s show being New Year’s Eve, could the blue brand win out again?

After being delayed due to the holiday, Tuesday nights numbers have now been released and once again, SmackDown Live has done better than RAW this week. The blue brand pulled in a rating of 2.091, good for an increase of 9.8% from last week. Here’s how the last four weeks of ratings for SmackDown Live look:

• December 11th: 1.977
• December 18th: 2.214
• December 25th: 1.904
• January 1st: 2.091

Unfortunately for the blue brand this week, they actually faced some competition in the Cable Top 150 Rankings for the 18-49 demographic, seeing a big drop outside of the top five for the first time since Election Night in November. Here is this week’s top five with SmackDown Live having a demographic share of 0.68, good enough to tie for 9th:

1. College Football/Rose Bowl – ESPN – 4.16
2. College Football/Sugar Bowl – ESPN – 3.79
3. College Football Studio Show (4:55PM) – ESPN – 3.69
4. Sugar Bowl Studio Show – ESPN – 2.73
5. College Football/Fiesta Bowl – ESPN – 2.35

EA’s Take: Just like I said with yesterday’s RAW ratings, it’s really difficult to draw any conclusions from ratings or demographic numbers because of the holidays. Everything’s been wacky for a couple of weeks now. I’m reiterating, but don’t expect SmackDown Live to continue outperforming RAW. That will be changing very quickly, like as soon as Monday with Braun’s return, Lesnar’s return, Cena advertised and whatever else they pull out of their hat for the red brand’s first show of 2019.