News broke a few hours prior to this weeks episode of Smackdown Live that Daniel Bryan had been medically cleared to return to the ring. The show itself saw Bryan cut a great promo about being cleared to return. He also was attacked later in the show by Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn.
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It turns out that Bryan’s return to the ring did give Smackdown’s ratings a bump.
According to Showbuzzdaily.com, Smackdown Live this week drew 2.888 million viewers.
This is up from last week’s show that drew 2.771 million viewers. It was also the highest number for Smackdown Live of 2018 so far.
I can’t help but feel like this probably wasn’t as big of a number as WWE expected. I personally thought they would easily crack 3 million this week for fans wanting to see what Brian had to say. To compare, Monday Night RAW this week drew 3.327 million viewers.
Here Are 16 Things That We Learned From Smackdown
Here is the Smackdown viewership tracker (via Wrestling INC)
- January 2nd Episode: 2.720 million viewers
- January 9th Episode: 2.603 million viewers
- January 16th Episode: 2.602 million viewers
- January 23rd Episode: 2.580 million viewers
- January 30th Episode: 2.509 million viewers
- February 6th Episode: 2.505 million viewers
- February 13th Episode: 2.449 million viewers
- February 20th Episode: 2.613 million viewers
- February 27th Episode: 2.692 million viewers
- March 6th Episode: 2.590 million viewers
- March 13th Episode: 2.771 million viewers
- March 20th Episode: 2.888 million viewers
Your thoughts on the numbers?