Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/05/29/low-first-hour-leads-to-raw-declining-13-on-memorial-day/
Photo courtesy: WWE
The Memorial Day edition of Raw was down 13% from the week prior with an average of 2,190,000 viewers on the USA Network.
The drop comes despite the NBA having the night off, although the combination of the holiday and Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals likely contributed to the decline.
Raw opened with 2,265,000 viewers, which was a terrible first hour and lowest opening hour since December. The show saw a small decrease to 2,254,000 viewers in the second and fell 9% in the third hour with an average of 2,051,000 viewers leading into the main event between Seth Rollins and Sami Zayn.
The first game of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Boston Bruins and St. Louis Blues averaged 5,251,000 viewers on NBC.
Next week’s episode of Raw featuring an appearance by The Undertaker will go up against the Stanley Cup, but not the NBA Finals.
Compared to Memorial Day in 2018, Raw was down 12% year-to-year. Last year’s Raw went against a massive NBA game that did 14.8 million and a Stanley Cup game that did 5.2 million viewers.