WWE Smackdown Rating Slightly Up Against NBA Finals, Audience Down

The ratings for last week’s WWE Smackdown nosed up a touch from last week’s episode opposite the NBA Finals, with the viewership slightly down. Friday’s episode garnered a 0.24 rating in the 18 – 49 demographic and 1.089 million viewers per Programming Insider. Those numbers were up a tick and down 0.6% respectively from the previous week’s 0.23 demo rating and audience of 1.096 million.

The demo rating was down from the 0.29 from two weeks ago, while the total audience remained the lowest since the February 13th episode on SYFY due the Olympics did 1.042 million. The top spot for the night went to the NBA Finals game, which brought in a 4.75 demo rating and 16.431 million viewers on on ABC, followed by the pre-game show with a 1.11/5.443 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 0.296 demo rating and 1.240 million viewers in 2026 compared to a 0.443 and 1.508 million for the same time period in 2025.