Following Monday’s show-closing angle on Raw where the SmackDown women’s division invaded the show, SmackDown saw its ratings increase by 11 percent this week to an average of 2.312 million viewers.
When WWE ran a similar angle in 2017 (October 23-24) the result was a 15 percent increase for SmackDown over the previous week.
The show retained a much larger than usual 95 percent of the Raw audience this week. Curiosity surrounding the injury to Becky Lynch as well as the Daniel Bryan-AJ Styles WWE Championship match (which resulted in Bryan winning the title) likely also contributed to the increase.
The show finished ninth for the night in the cable TV ratings and returned to its usual number one spot atop the 18-49 demo with a 0.8 rating.
Year-over-year, SmackDown was still down 11 percent from the go-home show for last year’s Survivor Series, which did 2.607 million viewers.
Here’s a look at the last 10 weeks of SmackDown numbers and how they compare to Raw’s from the same week: