Monday Night Raw enjoyed a slight increase in viewership this week.
According to Showbuzz Daily (h/t Marc Middleton of WrestlingInc.com), this week's show averaged 1.900 million viewers. This marks the second highest viewership for Raw in 2021, behind only the Jan. 4 "Legends Night" special that recorded 2.128 million viewers.
Also of note, the show peaked in the first hour with 2.031 million viewers. This comes a week after Raw reached 1.916 million viewers and 1.918 million viewers in the first and second hours of the show, respectively.
That was a rare instance in which the second hour drew higher ratings than the first. Viewership usually peaks in the opening hour before moving down in the second and third hours.
Raw has reached over 1.8 million viewers in nine of 10 shows in 2021. Only the Feb. 8 episode (1.715 million) fell under that mark.
For the most part, the ratings have been encouraging ever since Raw recorded 1.527 million viewers on the Dec. 14 episode, which marked the lowest viewership in the show's history.
Raw hasn't come anywhere close to that historic low ever since, consistently drawing over 1.8 million viewers. But the numbers are still far off what Raw averaged from 2017 to 2019.
There was plenty of action on this week's episode of Raw. WWE Champion Bobby Lashley had an easy title defense against The Miz, one week after winning the title.
Shane McMahon turned heel by taunting Braun Strowman, which will supposedly lead to a match at WrestleMania 37. Drew McIntyre and Sheamus fought to a referee stoppage, and the two will reportedly face off at Fastlane.
An Encouraging Trend
Monday Night Raw viewership has been much better in 2021 compared to the final months of 2020. WWE is clearly trending in the right direction here, but there's a long way to go in getting back to the numbers they were drawing several years earlier. Then again, this is a marathon and not a sprint. It's going to take savvy long-term planning and booking.