WrestleNomics reports that last Friday night’s episode of WWE SmackDown on the USA Network averaged 1.260 million viewers and achieved a rating of 0.29 in the key 18-49 demographic.
This marks a significant increase of 33.62% from the previous week’s viewership of 943,000 and a 31.82% rise from the prior week’s rating of 0.22 in the same demographic. The 18-49 rating for this episode was the highest since the November 21st episode, which also posted a 0.29 rating.
Additionally, this episode had the largest audience in nearly five months, since the September 19th episode, which had 1.342 million viewers.
So far in 2026, WWE SmackDown is averaging a rating of 0.252 in the key 18-49 demo and 1.067 million viewers, compared to a rating of 0.444 and 1.403 million viewers during the first two weeks of 2025.
The episode was headlined by The Vision (Austin Theory, “The Maverick” Logan Paul, “The Unpredictable Badass” Bron Breakker, and “The Tribal Thief,” “Big” Bronson Reed) facing off against “The Viper” Randy Orton, WWE World Tag Team Champion “Main Event” Jey Uso, “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes, and Sami Zayn in an 8-Man Tag Team Match.
