Updated Viewership Numbers For WWE Raw’s Netflix Debut

Netflix has released the week-long viewership numbers for WWE Raw’s debut episode on the platform. The company released its weekly top 10 rankings, which show that Raw scored a total of 5.9 million views for the week as ending on January 12th. That’s up from 4.9 million views that had been tallied as of Thursday of last week.

Netflix counts viewership numbers by taking the total number of hours watched (17.7 million in this case) and dividing it by the show’s runtime (three hours). Thus, people who watch just a minute or even an hour of the show are not counted as a full view; they get folded into the overall duration watched and factored into the math to figure out the number of views.

Obviously 5.9 million views is far above what the show ever drew on USA Network, and in fact would be more viewers than any episode in the last 10 years. However, there are a number of reasons why they aren’t comparable. For one, this is viewing spread across the week and the ratings we have received on terrestrial cable networks were always live or Live+Same Day viewing. In addition, those numbers were provided by Nielsen which does representative viewing numbers. And finally, the numbers represent global viewership, where the numbers we have received until now have been for US viewing.

The show ranked #4 in total views for the week among English TV shows on Netflix, behind only the limited series Missing You (15.2 million views in its second week), the Western limited series American Primeval (10.4 million shows in its first week), and the two-episode docuseries Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action (7.7 million views in its first week).

Squid Game season two led all shows regardless of language in its third week with 26.3 million views. It now stands as the third most-watched season of television of all time on Netflix with 152.5 million views, behind only the first season of Squid Game (265.2 million views) and Wednesday season one (252.1 million views).