Raw’s competition gets tougher from tonight with Monday Night Football on ESPN

[Liz]

Monday Night Raw has averaged over 2 million viewers since August 1 but that might change starting today as ratings powerhouse Monday Night Football restarts on ESPN and typically that takes a big bite out of the Raw audience.

Historically, Raw suffers in the first opening weeks of MNF and then slowly recovers but takes a beating when there's a big game going on.

Last year, Raw lost nearly 200,000 viewers in the first week when MNF started and during the pandemic-hit 2020 season, Raw weathered the storm by losing only 36,000 viewers from the prior week. In 2019, it was a big hit as Raw went from 2.5 million viewers to 2.1 million viewers in one week when MNF started.

Raw has done over 2 million three weeks in a row now, something that has not been done since the first few months of 2020 and has been doing the best numbers since then.

With renewed interest in the product, it will be interesting to see how the audience shifts with football back on Monday nights and tomorrow's ratings will give an exact explanation.