WWE SmackDown Just Hit a Shocking New Ratings Low

The October 10 SmackDown in Australia was a surprisingly great show. After months of dullness, last Friday had the return of old school Shinsuke Nakamura, a stare-down between the Wyatt Sicks and the MFTs, and Aleister Black overcoming Drew McIntyre thanks to help from his real life wife, Zelina Vega. That makes it a shame that so few people were watching.

SmackDown on October 10 had just 1,025,000 viewers and 299,000 viewers (0.22) in the all-important 18-49 demo. Outside of episodes from the FOX days that had to air on FS1 because of other sports commitments, this was the lowest rated SmackDown episode of all-time. It's a massive fall, with over half of SmackDown's viewership being lost from its peak on Fox when over two million fans watched every week.

SmackDown did have tough competition in the form of MLB playoffs, the WNBA Finals, and college football, while the episode was also not live, as it had been filmed hours earlier in Australia and spoilers were easily available. That's not the only reason for the huge drop though. Something else is going on with professional wrestling and ratings, and it's affecting both WWE and AEW.

WWE And AEW Are Being Hurt By Nielsen's New Ratings System

Ratings have always been crucial to wrestling, especially during the late 90s and the Monday Night Wars between WWE and WCW. Although not as important now, they still show just how popular (or unpopular) wrestling can be. Due to YouTube, social media, and so many other options being available, wrestling viewership is nowhere near what it used to be. Now, thanks to a new way that Nielsen figures up its TV ratings, it has suddenly got much worse.

Neilsen's ratings had previously been tallied as "panel-only", but have changed in the last few weeks to "Big Data + Panel". It was explained by Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics as:

Panel-only data has been based generally on a representative sample of households (”Nielsen households” or “panel” data) whose viewing is actually being metered. The national audience is/was then extrapolated based on that sample.

Adding in data from smart TVs and set-top boxes was thought to show an actual increase in ratings, but it has revealed a stunning new low. It's not just on WWE's side either, but AEW is feeling it too, as AEW Dynamite has hit record lows the last few weeks. Hopefully, fans come back and ratings increase, because AEW has been better for a while now and WWE just put on both a great SmackDown and Raw.