Last week’s Smackdown brought in less than a million viewers.
Programming Insider reports that Smackdown pulled in 990,000 viewers with a key demo rating of 0.56 on January 9th.
It still ranked second on cable in the key demo and was 7th in total viewers for the night.
Taking stock of the recent numbers, in 2025 Smackdown’s stats began to drop off in the fall. Since that time, viewers have been down approximately 25–35%, while the key demos have been off between 40–50%.
That key demo drop is especially concerning for WWE and their sponsors. That isn’t just a blip on the radar with the audience’s attention being shifted away to other sports or programming. It is a permanent change in viewing habits. A drop in the key demos hurts the bottom line, hurt revenue as ads are priced using that stat not the total viewers. Advertisers hone in on a target audience.
The show was more popular and “hotter” when it was only two hours long. At three hours, all the key stats begin to fall. It appears that every week the show loses viewers before the third hour and that third hour doesn’t attract more viewers, the show either sustains it audience or loses some of them each week.
