WWE Monday Night Raw rating up from last two weeks, key demo numbers, hourly trends, key comparative metrics

Last night’s episode of WWE Monday Night Raw (5/17) drew a 1.35 rating, up from the 1.28 rating of the past two weeks. It drew a 0.48 rating in the key 18-49 demographic, which was down from the 0.53 rating the prior two weeks and well below the post-WrestleMania demo ratings of 0.68 and 0.61 on Apr. 12 and 19 respectively. (AEW Dynamite, by comparison, drew a 0.31 last week and 0.42 the week before in the 18-49 demo.)

The first-to-third hour dropoff was smaller than usual, in part attributed to the mystery of who would answer the Bobby Lashley “Open Challenge” (which turned out to be Kofi Kingston). The third hour lost only 42,000 viewers compared to the first hour, although Raw’s peak’ hour was hour no. 2. The hourly viewership was as follows:

• 1.790M
• 1.932M
• 1.748M

One year ago this week, Raw drew a 1.32 rating as the pandemic “Performance Center” setting began to take its toll on viewership, as did news coverage of the country largely shutting down.

The yearly average for Raw so far is 1.31. The average through this point last year was 1.51. Raw drew much better in January through April last year compared to this year.