SmackDown does third-best ratings number since brand split

Tuesday night’s SmackDown on the USA Network was up to 2.792 million viewers, the show’s third-best showing since last July’s brand split.

The show featured a previously announced battle royal to supposedly determine a new number one contender for the WWE Championship in the main event. The night also opened with a SmackDown Women’s Championship match between rivals Alexa Bliss and Becky Lynch after Naomi was forced to relinquish the title and a well-promoted grudge match between Nikki Bella and Natalya.

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SmackDown finished fifth for the night in total viewers on cable, higher than it does most weeks, and it was second in the 18-49 demo with a 0.95 rating. It also retained a slightly higher than usual portion of the Raw audience from the night before, at 87.5 percent.

There was no big sports competition on Tuesday with the NBA on its All-Star break so that likely helped the rating, although all the major networks did have first-run programming.

Here’s a look at SmackDown ratings so far in 2017 as compared to Raw from the same week: