This past Friday we saw AEW and WWE go up against each other for the first time since going head to head during the “Wednesday night wars.” AEW Dynamite would eventually beat out the WWE NXT show and would eventually see the company move the show from Wednesday to Tuesday. So who would take Friday?
SmackDown had the upper hand against Rampage. WWE’s show pulled in a viewership of 793k viewers in Fast Nationals while Rampage drew in 549k, according to Showbuzz Daily. The Supersized SmackDown episode aired on FS1 instead of FOX, which resulted in lower numbers as it usually draws in 2 million viewers.
Since SmackDown ran for 2 hours and 30 minutes from 8 PM to 10:30 PM, it was in direct competition with Rampage which airs at 10 PM. As for the number of viewers in the coveted 18-49 demographic, the numbers fluctuate a lot in different cities. Here are the numbers according to Wrestling Observer Radio, Chicago: 1.0, Philadelphia: 0.2, Dallas: 0.7, Atlanta: 0.1, Houston: 0.4, and Washington D.C.: 0.4.
AEW Rampage saw the lowest numbers in the show’s history last week when it drew in 502k viewers. So things are definitely better in this regard. Last week’s SmackDown drew in 2.147 million viewers as opposed to this week’s 793k. As noted, SmackDown aired on FS1 instead of its home channel FOX.
Later on today we will have the National numbers and we will be able to see exactly how both shows did.
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