WWE RAW Sets New Record Low Viewership With Major College Football Competition

Monday's WWE RAW episode, featuring the first-ever Fist Fight main event with Big Show, Kevin Owens and Samoa Joe vs. Seth Rollins and The Authors of Pain, drew an average of 2.030 million viewers on the USA Network, according to Showbuzz Daily.

This is down 15% from last week's 2.385 million viewers for the first episode of 2020. This is the lowest viewership since the December 23 taped Christmas Week show, which drew 1.835 million viewers. This is also a new non-holiday low for RAW.

For this week's show, the first hour drew 2.218 million viewers (last week's hour 1 – 2.550 million), the second hour drew 2.059 million viewers (last week's hour 2 – 2.409 million) and the final hour drew 1.814 million viewers (last week's hour 3 – 2.195 million).

This is the third-lowest third hour viewership of all-time, including holiday episodes.

College football dominated the night on cable TV. RAW was #15 for the night in viewership on cable, behind 5 airings of college football on ESPN, SportsCenter at midnight, ESPN's Championship Drive, The Five, Special Report, Tucker Carlson Tonight, The Story, Hannity, Rachel Maddow Show, and The Ingraham Angle. WWE ranked #9 for the night on the Cable Top 150 with an average 18-49 demographic rating of 0.61, behind the 5 college football airings, SportsCenter at midnight, SportsCenter at 1am, and Championship Drive. The 5 airings of college football on ESPN drew right under 75 million viewers together. The Clemson vs. LSU 8:19pm airing topped the night with a 7.49 rating in the 18-49 demographic, and just over 25 million viewers by itself.

The Bachelor on ABC drew 5.374 million viewers on broadcast TV in the 8pm hour while The Neighborhood drew 4.675 million viewers on CBS, the American's Got Talent Champions show drew 6.521 million viewers on NBC, 911 drew 2.549 million viewers on Fox and CW's Flash drew 602,000 viewers, all in the 8pm hour on broadcast TV.

Below is our 2020 RAW Viewership Tracker:

January 6 Episode: 2.385 million viewers with a 0.74 rating in the 18-49 demographic
January 13 Episode: 2.030 million viewers with a 0.61 rating in the 18-49 demographic
January 20 Episode:

2019 Total: 125.746 million viewers over 52 episodes
2019 Average: 2.418 million viewers per episode

2018 Total: 149.628 million viewers over 53 episodes
2018 Average: 2.823 million viewers per episode

2017 Total: 156.971 million viewers over 52 episodes
2017 Average: 3.018 million viewers per episode