Smackdown’s 2017 viewership increased over the year 2016 as this year the show drew an average of 2,546,000, up from last year’s 2,419,000 average.
Over the course of the year, the show did over 2.5 million viewers a total of 34 times and it crossed the 3 million mark just once. In comparison, last year Smackdown passed the 2.5 million mark just 16 times. It also did over 3 million viewers just once.
The highest rated episode of Smackdown for 2017 was the April 11 show with 3,105,000 viewers, beating out the post-WrestleMania show which did 2,885,000 viewers. Coming in third was the January 31 episode which followed the Royal Rumble.
The June 13 episode was the least-watched with 2,072,000 viewers, which continued a bad week for WWE since the day before, Raw was also the least viewed of the year. The October 31 episode, falling on Halloween, came close with 2,119,000 viewers.
Comparing 2016 vs 2017 viewership is not completely fair though since Smackdown only went live on Tuesdays on July 19 of last year. Taking into account only those episodes from July 19, 2016 till the end of the year, Smackdown Live in 2016 averaged 2,625,000 viewers. But taking the same amount of episodes from this year from July 18 onward, Smackdown did 2,651,000 viewers on average which is on par with last year.
