Coming off of Sunday’s poorly received Battleground pay-per-view, SmackDown ratings essentially remained even with last week’s number. The show averaged 2.535 million viewers, down very slightly from last week’s 2.548 million.
The episode was third for the night on cable, trailing the Rachel Maddow Show and Tucker Carlson Tonight, both of which aired opposite SmackDown. In the 18-49 demo, it fell to second this week with a 0.77 rating, trailing Sharks and the City on the Discovery Network.
With a full year having passed since the brand split and the move to a live format on Tuesday nights, the year-over-year comparisons are relevant again, and SmackDown was down about eight percent from this week in 2016, about the same as Raw has been doing.
As it has almost every week since the NFL season ended, SmackDown retained between 80 and 85 percent of the Raw audience from the night before.
Here’s a look at the last 10 weeks of SmackDown ratings as compared to Raw from the same week: