With Fox moving away from Smackdown on Friday nights in favor of college football, the ratings are a key indicator telling whether the decision will pay off for Fox, both in terms of audience size and — though we can’t evaluate it here — ad value per viewer.
Fox Sports PR has eagerly highlighted Friday night football ratings with graphics on social media. Meanwhile, Smackdown has returned to the USA Network for the first time since 2019. Contrasting Fox’s messaging, rather than WWE or USA publicizing ratings information themselves, wrestling fans online with access to costly and specially-ordered Nielsen fast nationals data continue to share that information selectively, when it purportedly frames Smackdown ratings in a positive light.
It’s still early in Fox’s run with college football on Friday and Smackdown on USA. But so readers might begin to analyze for themselves, below is data year-to-date for each telecast of Smackdown on Fox, the first three weeks so far of college football games on Fox (which were, in this order: Arizona vs. Kansas State, Illinois vs. Nebraska, and Washington vs. Rutgers), as well as the first three weeks of Smackdown ratings back on USA Network, going head-to-head with the games on Fox and other competition.
Data was sourced from SpoilerTV and Programming Insider’s daily reports of Nielsen data.
Total viewers (P2+), live+same-day
P18-49 ratings, live+same-day
Brandon Thurston has written about wrestling business since 2015. He operates and owns Wrestlenomics.