August By The Numbers: An In-Depth Look at Ratings & YouTube Views and Why It Matters to WWE

Welcome to likely the NERDiest (said in Gallows voice) article I have written to date. This will be a weekly series where I take a deep dive into the numbers week over week then month over month for both ratings and YouTube views. The first article was most difficult as I had to take all of August at one time to put into this article. Every week every wrestling website and twitter puts out “Raw sees an increase in ratings” or “Raw ratings continue to plummet”. Then you also have people talking about how the lack of viewership for Raw and Smackdown every “concerns” people about the next TV deal. If you’ve followed me on Twitter you likely know my stance on this which has driven me to do these articles. No one individual point is correct in the argument of TV ratings, such as “People are cutting the cord” or TV ratings don’t matter like they use to” and the “TV ratings matter for revenue” they are all right.

So how can I prove that WWE is fine or that WWE should be concerned over the next TV deal? I’m going to take numbers prior to the last TV deal and then year over year numbers to provide you the information to make your own decision. So let’s first set the stage as WWE in 2014 agreed upon a new deal with NBC Universal and in this agreement Raw was to stay on the USA network, Smackdown would be on SYFY, and Total Divas would continue to stay on the E! Network. All businesses that work on a contract basis always reference back to the point they were the last time they were negotiating. During that time there is likely a promise of in this case increased viewership as well as more money from advertising sponsors. If you can tell WWE is doing a lot more outside of the box ways to woo sponsors such a Snapple, Burger King, KFC and Snickers. There has always been a thought and a truth behind wrestling doesn’t draw prime sponsors and while Burger King isn’t Mercedes it’s certainly better than others.

So we know that there are trends and statistics showing that going into 2020 homes with cable will be decreasing and even going below 100 million homes. We won’t be going into “cord cutting” or cable home trends, what we do know is that live television that draws consistently good ratings is very important to Networks right now. As I mentioned before we all look for the weekly Tweet, Facebook message, or link to the ratings for Raw and Smackdown every week. If you look on Twitter you have loads of people praising or saying the sky is falling based on if the WWE numbers week over week changed. Let’s be honest the closer you are to a big four network special the higher the numbers are going to be and during Wrestlemania season there are no comparisons. With that said I’ve compiled the numbers from prior to the current contract, to last year, and with where we stand as of today. This will show the growth or loss from WWE over prior negotiations and upcoming negotiations. This will also show a year over year trend of if the WWE is on a constant uprising moving towards the next contract or if we are trending downward and not showing growth. Below are the breakdown of the numbers for Raw and Smackdown.

As you can see in the above graph the WWE is up in totality from 2013 which was the August prior to the new contract.  Raw is up about 8% from 2013 and is up 4% year over year. Smackdown is up 35% from 2013 when it was on SyFy and wasn’t live. This is still a significant increase in viewers that can be shown if it stays consistent and constant which it appears it has. Year over Year Smackdown is down 2% which is lower for the month of August however overall I feel Smackdown has become a larger asset for WWE in future negotiations.

We also know that digital numbers are more important now than in 2014. With tech giants such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook all looking to step into the television world digital footprints are more important than ever. If you’ve followed my Twitter over the last few weeks I’ve been sending out YouTube numbers from WWE’s channel and it surprises me not only who draws good numbers but also who doesn’t. So with the overall increase in August in television from Raw and Smackdown, WWE is also doing massive weekly YouTube numbers which only adds value to the brand. Below are the numbers for this past week and you may be surprised at who does and who doesn’t draw large views.

What we see here is that John Cena, Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar are drawing huge YouTube numbers and to let you know they do so weekly. Lesnar and Strowman the week prior did 4.7 million Youtube views. Cena and Reigns also did 2.5 million views the week prior just on their promo alone. The big takeaway from this was the 15 man battle royal which did the second highest amount of views that had Jeff Hardy win. The week prior the Hardys and Ambrose/Rollins did a big YouTube number and as you can see this week neither Seth Rollins nor Dean Ambrose made the top five. Ambrose did slightly better than Rollins who hasn’t reached 500k views. On the Smackdown Live side of things we have to remember Raw has had another day on YouTube however not one video has yet to reach 1M views which hasn’t happened by Thursday since I’ve been looking. AJ Styles and Kevin Owens consistently draw around 500K views on YouTube and my biggest shock from everything is that the Fashion Files only did 130K views. While it is a simple backstage segment I would think it would be a hit on YouTube.

Moving forward these articles will likely not be as wordy and more number driven. However I felt the need to explain why I’m writing these articles as well as the perspective I’m coming from. I hope you enjoyed this and if you so please share it, leave me a comment below or as always reach out to me on Twitter @awesomephinatic and until next time be awesome.