Running against Game 6 of the New York Knicks vs. Boston Celtics series, Friday Night SmackDown dropped to its second-lowest audience on the USA Network.
The May 16 episode from Greensboro attracted an audience of 1,290,000 viewers and approximately 483,000 viewers (0.36) in the 18-49 demographic on the USA Network.
Those figures reflect an 11% drop in its viewership and a 12% decline in the core demo from last week. It is also SmackDown’s lowest numbers since November 15, when it aired against the undercard of the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight on Netflix.
The NBA playoffs dominated the night as the Knicks vs. Celtics averaged 5,726,000 viewers and a 1.63 in the 18-49 demographic on ESPN.
SmackDown managed to rank fourth among all programming for the night in the 18-49 demographic and beat everything outside of the NBA with ESPN’s pre- and post-game coverage ranking above WWE.
SmackDown did top Game 6 of the Florida Panthers vs. Toronto Maple Leafs, which had 919,000 viewers and 0.22 in the demo on TNT.
The three-hour broadcast of SmackDown featured Tiffany Stratton defending the WWE Women’s Championship against Nia Jax in the main event.
Data: Wrestlenomics and Programming Insider
