Week 2 of Raw on Netflix gets 3.7M views worldwide, down from 5.9M of Week 1
An early hint of where Raw viewership on Netflix will normalize
Netflix's TUDUM (I've yet to figure out what, if anything that stands for — UPDATE: Readers have alerted me "Tudum" is the sound the Netflix logo makes when you turn on the app) weekly rankings of the most-watched content on the platform were released on Monday afternoon. It shows Raw on Netflix ranked #4 for the second week in a row.
Across the seven-day period from Monday, January 13 to Sunday, January 19, the January 13 episode of Raw had 3,700,000 "views", which is simply the total number of hours viewed (8,200,000) divided by the program's duration. As I've noted before, this is essentially an average minute audience (AMA) measurement, similar to the Nielsen method that we're familiar with. It's important to remember this is a global measurement, not a U.S.-only measurement that we're used to with Nielsen. But globally, this is similar to saying over 7 days (similar to a DVR+7 window), the show was watched by 3.7 million viewers.
That's down significantly from the premiere, as expected. Netflix showed in the same chart in the prior week that the first episode of Raw on the platform drew 5.9 million views globally, also ranking #4 that week. Therefore, week 2 was down 37% from the premiere.
How does that compare to other memorable premieres of wrestling programs? For comparison, albeit using Nielsen U.S. data only, the second episode of Smackdown on Fox in 2019 declined 26% from week 1 to week 2 (3,888,000 viewers to 2,877,000). The second episode of Dynamite on TNT, also in 2019, declined from 28% from week 1 to week 2. In both of those cases, though, it seems to take until about week 3 for these programs to settle into their normal range.
Focusing only on U.S. viewership, live viewing of Raw was likely impacted to some extent in week 3, this past Monday, due to competition from the College Football National Championship game. But we'll see if that's made up for through delayed viewing or is just less significant in a global measurement, as there's much less interest in college football outside the U.S.
Netflix ranked #4 in both week 1 and week 2 globally. In the U.S., Raw actually ranked better in the second week, at #4, up from #5. However, I believe viewership was also significantly down in the U.S. for the second episode. Netflix doesn't include any viewership data beyond the ranking for the U.S. or any region, only for global viewership.
If Netflix's press release announcing data for the week 1 viewership is any indication, it suggests that 70% of live viewing was in the U.S., though, one would think that majority is significantly diminished as the week goes on and viewers from around the world in different time zones watch the program.
As reported at the time, according to Netflix's third-party for measuring U.S. viewership, the premiere averaged 2.6 million accounts live+same-day, which is comparable to Nielsen's live+same-day measurement of households. Throughout 2024, Raw on the USA Network averaged 1.2 million households, meaning the premiere was watched by about double the audience of a typical Raw last year.
On Tuesday evening's Netflix earnings call, co-CEO Ted Sarandos indicated his happiness with viewership of the Raw debut and gave some limited insight on international viewership.
"Our first week [with Raw], we drew about 5 million views, which is about two times the audience that Monday Night Raw was getting in linear television, pretty consistent with how we modeled it, how we'd hope to build the audience for the league," Sarandos said. "We also saw that the non-live viewing... grew by 25%, mostly outside of the U.S. time zones."
He also noted U.K., Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Brazil were "big markets" for watching WWE on Netflix so far.
Brazil and Mexico stand out somewhat among that group as markets we don't usually consider to be leading international markets for WWE.