Monday’s WWE Raw Draws Strong Viewership Against Very Stiff Competition

Viewership data is in for Monday’s live WWE RAW and despite stiff competition from the college football BCS National Championship game on ESPN, RAW rang in 2013 with a very strong showing.

Monday’s WWE RAW featuring the return of The Rock and CM Punk vs. Ryback in a TLC match drew 4.42 million viewers. This is up a sharp 900,000 viewers from the previous week’s (taped) New Year’s Eve broadcast, making it the most-watched RAW since August 27th.

Hourly viewership was as follows:

Hour 1: 4,290,000
Hour 2: 4,320,000
Hour 3: 4,650,000

As you can see, RAW finally broke the streak of losing viewers in the third hour of the show. What’s even more impressive is that the BCS National Championship game drew a staggering 26.38 million viewers.