Going against major NBA competition, the taped edition of SmackDown Live drew its lowest viewership since going live on Tuesdays in July 2016.
Tuesday’s episode from England averaged 1,827,000 viewers on the USA Network. It was a 5.4% drop from last week’s number and beat the previous Tuesday night low set on April 30th.
Unlike Raw on Monday, SmackDown faced heavy competition with the NBA Draft Lottery at 8:30 pm Eastern averaging 4,427,000 viewers on ESPN followed by the Golden State Warriors vs. Portland Trail Blazers game that attracted 7.3 million viewers. There was also an NHL playoff game between Boston and Carolina that did 1.9 million viewers.
If you compare this week’s episode to one year ago, which was also taped in the U.K., SmackDown dropped 20.5% but also went against a bigger NBA playoff game in 2018.
