WWE SmackDown ratings drop only 11 percent on Fourth of July

Tuesday night’s Fourth of July edition of SmackDown on the USA Network averaged 2.329 million viewers, down 11 percent from last week but right in line with what the show was doing just over a month ago.

For a comparison, Raw was down 14 percent last year when the show fell on the July 4th holiday. SmackDown likely held up a little better than expected due to the highly publicized return of John Cena.

SmackDown was first for the night in viewers on cable television by quite a wide margin, with no other shows cracking the 1.8 million barrier. The episode was also first in the 18-49 demo with a 0.75 rating, which was much higher than the second place Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on ESPN2.

The show was up in the year-over-year ratings as the July 7th, 2016 episode of SmackDown did 2.241 million viewers for the taped show on Thursday night.

Here’s a look at SmackDown ratings in 2017 as compared to Raw from the same week. As per usual, the show retained between 80 and 90 percent of the Raw audience from the previous night: