WWE Smackdown Rating & Audience Hit Seven Month Highs

WWE Smackdown didn’t have the men’s NCAA Tournament to deal with, and its ratings and audience shot up as a result. Friday’s episode score a 0.43 rating in the 18 – 49 demographic and 1.508 million viewers per Programming Insider. Those numbers are up 30.3% and 15.3% respectively from the previous week’s 0.33 demo rating and audience of 1.308 million.

The demo rating and audience were both the best for the show since the September 5th, 2025 episode brought in a 0.51 demo rating and 1.585 million viewers. That show was buoyed by being the fallout show for Clash in Paris where Brock Lesnar returned, as well as the heavily hinted-at return of AJ Lee. The top spot for the night went to the women’s NCAA Final Four game, which garnered a 1.03 demo rating and 5.148 million viewers.

As a reminder, Nielsen made an adjustment to its Big Data + Panel numbers in late January, and even the original Big Data + Panel ratings makes ratings difficult to compare to pre-change weeks. That said, WWE Smackdown is currently averaging a 0.298 demo rating and 1.228 viewers in 2026 compared to a 0.461 and 1.535 million for the same time period in 2025.