John Cena's return boosts WWE SmackDown to best viewership in two years

[Big Red Machine]

https://www.f4wonline.com/news/wwe/john ... -two-years

SmackDown also tied its highest 18-49 demo rating of 2022.

Paul Fontaine
5 hours ago



Friday's WWE SmackDown, which featured the in-ring return of John Cena, averaged 2.629 million viewers on Fox, up 10.6 percent from the previous week. Aside from the Christmas Day episode in 2020 (which had an NFL lead-in), it's the largest audience total for SmackDown since October 11, 2019, which was the second-ever episode on Fox.

SmackDown topped all of network television with a 0.64 rating in the 18-49 demo, up 16.4 percent from last week. That's tied for SmackDown's best rating in that category for 2022.

SmackDown was the seventh-highest rated show on TV in the 18-49 demo, behind college football games and related programming on ESPN. SmackDown was fifth on network TV in terms of total viewers, which is higher than the show usually ranks. It also led network TV with a 0.44 rating in the 18-34 demo.

Year-over-year comparisons are not relevant since last year's SmackDown at this time aired on New Year's Eve on FS1 and was a "Best Of" episode that did the lowest numbers in show history.

[XIV]

Nothing says "we've failed to build any major stars for years" like a seeing stat like this.

[Big Red Machine]

Nothing says "we've failed to build any major stars for years" like a seeing stat like this.

Yes... but Fox also hyped this one a lot harder than they have most others.

[XIV]

Nothing says "we've failed to build any major stars for years" like a seeing stat like this.

Yes... but Fox also hyped this one a lot harder than they have most others.

If only Fox hyped a show they paid billions of dollars for on their programming that much every week!

In the UK, WWE is shown on BT Sports these days, and they have specific social media accounts dedicated to it! Posting little clips of past and present wrestling and hyping upcoming shows.

That's why WWE viewership in the UK remains comparatively quite high vs the amount of people who get BT Sport. Approx 70,000 watch it live weekly, although it is shown at 1AM here so those are relatively expected numbers... catch up viewership is much higher.

However, I will note that even with John Cena, AEW Dynamite will beat WWE Smackdown in the ratings in the UK, as they beat it every week. Dynamite is on a free to air station available in every home in the UK (a potential audience of about 60m people), whereas WWE is available only on BT Sports which is a subscription channel (which only approximately 2.5m have available in their homes).