WWE Smackdown Rating & Audience Rebound From Last Week’s Drop

WWE Smackdown bounced back a little bit from last week’s slip in the ratings and total audience. Friday’s episode garmered in a 0.29 rating in the 18 – 49 demographic and 1.279 million viewers per Programming Insider. Those numbers were up 16.0% and 10.9% respectively from the previous week’s 0.25 demo rating and audience of 1.153 million.

The demo rating was still down from the 0.32 number from two weeks ago, while the total audience was the best since the April 17th episode had 1.580 million. The top spot for the night went to the NHL Playoffs, which brought in a 0.38 and 1.352 million viewers on ESPN, followed by Celebrity Jeopardy on ABC with a 0.28/3.514 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 0.306 demo rating and 1.257 million viewers in 2026 compared to a 0.461 and 1.537 million for the same time period in 2025.