DeMarco’s WWE Smackdown YouTube Viewership Report (5/21/19)

Greg DeMarco’s look at the WWE Smackdown YouTube viewership for the May 21st broadcast!

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 such, YouTube has joined social media as a metric as important to WWE as television ratings (if not more). The weekly WWE Smackdown YouTube Performance Report is a look into that success metric.

As you’ve become accustomed to, here is this week’s WWE Smackdown YouTube Performance Report, compiled overnight Thursday (about 36 hours after Smackdown went off the air), for the 5/21/19 edition of WWE Smackdown:

• Roman Reigns vs. Elias – 1.539 million views
• R-Truth chased by Smackdown roster members – 1.311 million views
• Dolph Ziggler attacks Kofi Kingston – 818k views
• Carmella vs. Mandy Rose – 801k views
• Becky Lynch & Bayley vs. Lacey Evans & Charlotte Flair – 616k views
• Big E returns – 508k views
• Dolph Ziggler explains attack on Kofi Kingston – 498k views
• R-Truth asks Carmella for help – 421k views
• Carmella creates R-Truth’s disguise – 366k views
• Promo video for Triple H vs. Randy Orton – 365k views
• Ali vs. Andrade – 227k views
• Kayla Braxton interviews Bayley – 96k views
• Elisa and Shane McMahon backstage promo – 81k views

Ratings analysis appears after the ad – buy a shirt!

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Greg DeMarco’s WWE Smackdown YouTube Ratings Analysis

Numerical analysis!

• 5/21 edition of Smackdown: 7.647 million total views across 13 videos
• 5/14 edition of Smackdown: 4.226 million total views across 10 videos
  • +3.421 million views, 80% increase for this week over last week
• 5/21 Top 5: 5.085 million views
• 5/14 Top 5: 3.614 million views
  • +1.471 million views, 40% increase over last week
• 5/21 average: 588k views
• 5/14 average: 422k views
  • +166k views per video, 39% decrease over last week

The overall views are WAY UP over last week’s Smackdown, but WWE produced 3 more videos. However, the average per video was way up, 166k per video. So you can’t attribute the overall view count to the fact that more videos came out. You can attribute it to more people watching the videos–and that’s the goal! Smackdown also improved in the TV ratings this week, so it’s all positive all around for the blue brand.

Roman Reigns leads the way, but Elias has the odd distinction of being in the first place AND the last place videos this week. The WWE 24/7 Championship delivered once again, coming in at #2 and driving nearly 2.9 million total views across 4 videos. The title may be ugly, but the results aren’t. Dolph Ziggler’s return was enough to garner a 3rd place spot this week, and his two videos combined to hit over 1.3 million views. Big E’s return finished outside the Top 5, which surprised me.

Strong showing for the women’s division as Carmella and Mandy Rose finished #4, and Becky Lynch & Bayley vs. Laecy Evans & Charlotte Flair finished #5. Thanks to the 24/7 Championship, Carmella appeared in 4 different videos with R-Truth this week.

Sad stat of the week: Ali vs. Andrade only drew 227k views, more than 100k less than the promo package for Randy Orton vs. Triple H at Super ShowDown (365k views). For a comparison, the video of the match Ali shared on Twitter did 102k views at the time of this writing:

Winner gets a full name. #SDLive pic.twitter.com/tQsWf4XdY8

— ALI / Adeel Alam (@AliWWE) May 22, 2019

My favorite video…Ali vs. Andrade! Both men delivered in a great way.

What did the YouTube results for this week tell you?