Monday’s episode of Raw was built around the idea that Brock Lesnar would cash-in his Money in the Bank briefcase, which ultimately didn’t occur.
The abnormal viewership pattern reflected a heightened interest in Lesnar’s cash-in with the second-hour cash-in tease outdrawing the first and third hours of the show. In a rarity, the first hour was least watched hour, narrowly edged out by the third hours 41,000 extra viewers.
The three-hour show averaged 2,405,000 viewers, an increase of 10% from the week prior. The first hour attracted an average viewership of 2.308 million, then increased 11% in the second hour to 2.558 million, and fell 8% in the last hour, which featured The Undertaker’s promo at the end. While an increase from last week’s number, it still fell under 2.5 million viewers, which was a mark they hit on May 20th going against the NBA playoffs.
Despite advertising the Lesnar cash-in for the third consecutive week, it hooked people to stay tuned through the first two hours before the decline in the final hour after the angle where Lesnar said he would cash-in on Friday’s Super Showdown event, instead.
There was no competition from the NBA on Monday, although Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final averaged 5,128,000 viewers on NBC.
Next week’s episode will go against Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors.
I saw on WWE’s Instagram today Liv Morgan and I said to myself damn remember her. Her Aleister Black, War Raiders, EC3 I understand these people don’t move the needle but I was hoping Brock and Taker didn’t make that much of a ratings difference so they could just do a show and get new blood out there
It is self fulfilling, those wrestlers don’t get exposure, so they don’t get over, so they don’t move the needle in ratings, so they don’t get exposure.
They won the night on cable. It’s obvious there is no point to making new starts. Keep giving us UT and Brock and fans will watch. It’s not a hard concept - simple minded fans need a simple minded approach
Band aid solutions. I dont see how this will work long term. Especially when Brock is not a full time worker. Unless he puts Rollins over or something like that.
That was the problem with the Rollins win in the first place. It didn’t make him look like a big star baby face. You need someone to ride up and legit beat Brock by overcoming him, going beyond his level, not a cheap win. They kind of did it with Roman, they just did it poorly with him getting match after match without anything really changing in between or him needing to re earn a shot etc. Becky has the same issue with her mania victory. Neither made them a big star. Kofi was the only one to have the big baby face victory.
We don’t know if the newer stars move the needle or not since they aren’t on TV right now. If you gave EC3 a chance he might get some eyeballs to Raw, but they have done zero with him so it’s really not fair to say he doesn’t move the needle. If you let him or say Liv Morgan win a few matches each and actually get some promo time, they may do better than Vince expects. They need to build new stars. I really hope AEW does well, they need competition.