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WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event on NBC on Saturday, Dec. 14 drew 1.590 million viewers on NBC broadcast network with an additional 700,000 viewers on Peacock, according to Variety.
By comparison, WWE Smackdown on USA Network, a cable network, the night before drew 1.530 million viewers. So being on broadcast TV with a solid PLE-level line-up of five matches heavily hyped for weeks on both Raw and Smackdown barely drew more cable viewers than a standard Smackdown on traditional TV.
SNME went up against the Heisman Trophy presentation show on ESPN, which drew 2,251 million viewers and the NBA Cup semi-final game on ABC broadcast network, which drew 1.8980 million viewers.
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In the key 18-49 demo it drew a 0.42 rating, compared to 0.62 for the Heisman Trophy show and 0.47 for the NBA Cup. Smackdown the night before drew a 0.47 rating in that demo.
In the male 18-49 demo, it drew a 0.55 rating compared to 0.69 for Smackdown in that demo the night before. In the male 18-34 demo, SNME drew 0.20 compared to 0.46 for Smackdown the night before. So the Saturday night special timeslot caused a bigger dropoff in male core demo viewers than the overall 18-49 demo rating.
Since this is the first Saturday Night’s Main Event in many years, there’s not a lot to compare it to and the TV landscape continues to change to the point that being on broadcast TV isn’t a huge difference-maker compared to being on cable. When you throw in that many WWE fans are used to watching special WWE events on Peacock and many chose that over watching NBC via cable or broadcast antennae access, there are no good comparison points since, without Peacock, perhaps most of those viewers would have watched on NBC. TV commercials aired on both NBC and Peacock, so the total viewership of around 2.3 million is what counts the most.
The last SNME special on NBC in 2008 drew 2.35 million viewers, so this is right around that total.
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