On the eve of the first premium live event under their extremely lucrative new partnership with ESPN, WWE’s Friday night show offered up two title matches and a rampaging Brock Lesnar. But even with that,
and a week’s worth of Wrestlepalooza hype from the so-called sports leader, SmackDown’s numbers were largely unchanged from the previous week.
According to Programming Insider, Sept. 19’s Palooza g0 home was watched by 1,342,000 viewers on USA Network, where it did a .37 rating among 18-49 year olds. That’s down slightly in total viewers (<2%) and unchanged in the demo rating.
And while a bigger bump would have been nice, WWE still outpaced almost all of the competition with the 18-49 crowd. SmackDown was first in the demo among all cable originals last Friday night, and second only to FOX’s Big Ten college football game of the week, which saw Big E’s Iowa Hawkeyes hand the Rutgers Scarlet Knights their first loss of the season. That had an audience of 2.66 million with a .58 rating.
In addition to ’Palooza fallout, this Friday will feature a Women’s title Triple Threat between champ Tiffany Stratton and challengers Jade Cargill and Nia Jax. We’ll see how that episode fares, then add those results to our running list of every SmackDown performance from the past year:
- Sept. 20, 2024 – 1.49 million viewers / .45 demo rating
- Sept. 27 – 1.57 / .45
- Oct. 4 – 1.52 / .47
- Oct. 11 – 1.65 / .49
- Oct. 18 – 1.38 / .42
- Oct. 25 – 1.42 / .43
- Nov. 1 – 1.43 / .42
- Nov. 8 – 1.53 / .47
- Nov. 15 – 1.23 / .32
- Nov. 22 – 1.58 / .46
- Nov. 29 – 1.34 / .40
- Dec. 6 – 1.49 /.44
- Dec. 13 – 1.53 / .47
- Dec. 20 – 1.33 / .37
- Dec. 27 – 1.44 / .41
- Jan. 3, 2025* – 1.53 / .45
- Jan. 10 – 1.44 / .40
- Jan. 17 – 1.40 / . 42
- Jan. 24 – 1.44 / .44
- Jan. 31 – 1.58 / .51
- Feb. 7 – 1.51 / .48
- Feb. 14 – 1.38 / .42
- Feb. 21 – 1.74 / .51
- Feb. 28 – 1.73 / .52
- March 7 – 1.74 / .52
- March 14 – 1.57 / .52
- March 21 – 1.46 / .39
- March 28 – 1.35 / .40
- April 4 – 1.58 / .47
- April 11 – 1.55 / .45
- April 18 – 1.74 / .55
- April 25 – 1.60 / .51
- May 2 – 1.41 / .37
- May 9 – 1.46 / .41
- May 16 – 1.29 / .36
- May 23 – 1.38 / .33
- May 30 – 1.38 / .34
- June 6 – 1.42 / .42
- June 13 – 1.40 / .38
- June 20 – 1.52 / .38
- June 27 – 1.45 / .41
- July 4** – 1.17 / .32
- July 11 – 1.40 / .37
- July 18 – 1.55 / .45
- July 25 – 1.71 / .48
- Aug. 1 – 1.54 / .46
- Aug. 8 – 1.56 / .48
- Aug. 15 – 1.43 / .35
- Aug. 22 – 1.26 / .35
- Aug. 29 – 1.15 / .28
- Sept. 5 – 1.59 / .51
- Sept. 12 – 1.32 / .37
- Sept. 19 – 1.34 / .37
* Added a third hour
** Returned to two hours
For complete results from the latest SmackDown, our live blog is here. To read a recap & review of the night’s events click here.
