Will Smackdown numbers slip moving to the USA network

Cattle Mutilation

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Combined with the PLE's being on Peacock. I know most of us hate Peacock but it's in something like 15-20x the homes that WWE Network was.
PLEs on WWE Network and then Peacock was a huge deal. It's some of the best and most important content they do, even attracts people like me who won't watch the weekly TV. They took a loss on it at first, but there's no doubt the increased exposure created dividends down the line.

Like think of how much easier it is to get invested in the weekly content, knowing that the payoff is likely to happen at one of the PLEs, and then knowing you can easily afford it with a Peacock subscription.

As opposed to AEW where the payoffs are almost always on PPV but then having to shell out $50 like 8-10x a year. If you can't afford to shell out the money for the PPVs, it's got to be hard to get invested in the weekly content knowing you aren't going to be able to see the payoff.
 

prophecypro

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Smackdown continuing on a Friday on cable will dip

If they get 1.4-.12 mil like people are saying I'd say thats good
 

AKM-95

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I'm expecting smackdown to take a hit and NXT to be the same or little better. But the wildcard is RAW it's not going to be on traditional cable but it's moving to Netflix which is the main streaming platform.
 

Reality Check

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It won’t as The CW is a dying network and none of their shows even sports outside of some bowl games are cracking a million viewers these days.

CW a dying network even with the changes. No show was getting a mil in viewers

USA Network legitimately only has WWE programming and I believe Olympics coverage every 2 years. The network would probably cease to exist if they lost out on Smackdown in addition to RAW. USA Network is a Zombie channel that's literally being propped up by WWE programming.
 

Thavoiceofthevoiceless

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USA Network legitimately only has WWE programming and I believe Olympics coverage every 2 years. The network would probably cease to exist if they lost out on Smackdown in addition to RAW. USA Network is a Zombie channel that's literally being propped up by WWE programming.
And The CW is in an even worse spot than that. They have no original programming of their own and is basically dependent on shows from other networks.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if those ratings come in lower compared to what they are now.
 

drifter

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SD's averaging 2.2 for 2024 going off Wrestlenomics, 2.3 for 2023/Bloodline peak

1.2-1.4 off just moving to cable is too big a dip. Raw's doing 1.7 this year, I'd expect SD around the same mark with occasional 2.0s here and there if the card's strong enough. Answer is they will but I don't think the drop will be large

Raw going to Netflix hurts SD more than SD moving to cable. Raw will be the A+ show of the two again, the one the major angles happen on etc. USA Network gets the B show again
 

Cattle Mutilation

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SD's averaging 2.2 for 2024 going off Wrestlenomics, 2.3 for 2023/Bloodline peak

1.2-1.4 off just moving to cable is too big a dip. Raw's doing 1.7 this year, I'd expect SD around the same mark with occasional 2.0s here and there if the card's strong enough. Answer is they will but I don't think the drop will be large

Raw going to Netflix hurts SD more than SD moving to cable. Raw will be the A+ show of the two again, the one the major angles happen on etc. USA Network gets the B show again
I would suspect on average lower than what Raw is doing outside of football season given it's on a Friday night. During football season I can see it doing better since we all know Monday Night Football eats away at the audience.
 
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At the end of the day, none of this will mean much. It will be a very long time before WWE has to negotiate TV rights again.

RAW on Netflix, we won't even know the numbers. Netflix doesn't release them nor are they required to. There will be "guesses" but nothing official. Netflix might release a statement like "30 million people watched RAW" and in their eyes it's counting every viewer that clicked on the episode over the course of a month or something lol
 

JerseyBoy23

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At the end of the day, none of this will mean much. It will be a very long time before WWE has to negotiate TV rights again.

RAW on Netflix, we won't even know the numbers. Netflix doesn't release them nor are they required to. There will be "guesses" but nothing official. Netflix might release a statement like "30 million people watched RAW" and in their eyes it's counting every viewer that clicked on the episode over the course of a month or something lol
Neilsen has some streaming metrics but it’s total minutes viewed per person.
 
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