Smackdown took a hit last Friday.
According to the Nielsen ratings, Smackdown only pulled in 995,000 overnight viewers last week with a 0.21 in the key demo.
That’s a drop of 245,000 viewers in one week’s time as last week 1,240,000 viewers tuned into Smackdown.
The last time Smackdown dropped below a million viewers was during Halloween when the show pulled in 933,000 overnight viewers.
You’d have to go way back to November 2023 to find the previous time Smackdown was below a million viewers. It aired on FS1 on the 24th with only 789,000 viewers.
2025 has been a year of strong peaks, shrinking consistency and declining averages for the show ever since the new Nielsen methodology came into play. Smackdown has suffered from demo erosion that tracks closely with total viewers sliding as well although it ranks in the Top 5–10 cable programs on Friday nights.
Compared to last year Smackdown is significantly down in both total viewers and demo ratings. Viewership in 2024 averaged over 2M per week while 2025 commonly sits around 1M to 1.4M. SmackDown’s key demos are down around 37% to 45% compared to 2024.
