The post-Royal Rumble edition of WWE SmackDown stayed in contention for viewership on Friday night despite a drop in comparison to the go-home show the week before. For the fifth straight week in a row, the blue brand keeps its head above the two-million viewer mark as the program captured an average audience of 2.126 million viewers but however, does average to a loss of 101,000 viewers in comparison to the previous week’s number of 2.227 million.
From a demographic perspective, SmackDown did happen to keep it’s 18-49 audience at steady 0.6, the third week in a row for that number, remaining only below Shark Tank 0.7 for Friday evening’s highest in the heavily cherished category.
This week’s episode did pack a bit of a punch as we saw Edge show up on Fox and get confronted by The Tribal Chief himself, Roman Reigns. Matters didn’t go as expected for Roman as Kevin Owens crashed the party with a stunner to the champion and leaving Edge grinning in approval. The episode was also highlighted by a Bianca Belair segment, Big E defending his Intercontinental Title and Daniel Bryan submitting clean to Cesaro in a one-on-one matchup.