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Closer look at post-Wrestlemania Raw ratings the last 5 years
posted by EnickmaSTAFFMOD on May 29, 2017 at 7:55 PM
I thought it was both interesting and scary to see how badly viewership has fallen for Raw (overall, ratings for this period of the year are down 30% from 2012).
Just for reference, here were the big post-WM programs for each of these years (anyone feel free to add others that I may not remember):
- 2012: John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar, CM Punk (champion) vs. Chris jericho
- 2013: John Cena (champion) vs. Ryback, Triple H vs. Brock Lesnar
- 2014: Daniel Bryan (champion) vs. Kane, The Shield vs. Evolution, John Cena vs. Wyatt Family
- 2015: Seth Rollins (champion) vs. Randy Orton, Roman Reigns vs. Big Show, John Cena vs. Rusev
- 2016: Roman Reigns (champion) vs. AJ Styles, Dean Ambrose vs. Chris Jericho, Charlotte vs. Natalya
- 2017: Roman Reigns vs. Braun Strowman, Seth Rollins vs. Samoa Joe, Alexa Bliss vs. Bayley (Owens/Jericho and Orton/Wyatt were programs on both Raw and Smackdown)
So a few observations of mine, but of course there are always a lot of things going on at times that make it unreasonable to ever narrow the numbers down to one reason.
The only increase in ratings in this period in the last 5 years was in 2014 following arguably one of the greatest Wrestlemanias ever. This period featured Daniel Bryan as champion and The Shield's babyface turn. The increase was very minor, but it was an increase nonetheless, and the Raw following Wrestlemania 2014 was the highest rated show of any show on the chart.
The largest decrease in ratings for this period came between 2015 and 2016. Depending on how you view it, it could be attributed to Roman's megapush. Rollins did leave Wrestlemania in 2015 as champion and spent most of the year as champion while Roman largely dominated the midcard, so there is an argument to be had there. However, the Raw after Wrestlemania 2015 had the second highest ratings for any show on the chart.
Anyone else have any thoughts on the ratings trend?
Reply by simian_ninja
on May 31, 2017 at 2:25 AM
Yeah, but Roman sells a lot of merchandise and ratings don't matter - until somebody else holds the title and aren't able to bring up the ratings. Then ratings matter.
Reply by Ore-Sama
on May 31, 2017 at 4:52 AM
Roman sells about as much merchandise as any other main event star proportionally, but since they make a ridiculous amount more for him compared to almost anyone else, he'll make more money by default. It would be very hard for a business with ten items in stock at a time to outsell a store with similarly valued items but with fifty in stock at a time, assuming both sell about equally well.