Excitement of WWE Raw on Netflix might already be wearing off

The build-up was great. WWE Raw on Mondays would move from the USA Network to Netflix at the beginning of 2025, and viewership would greatly increase. The streamer had a greater global reach than did USA, and this would bring in new fans as well as those existing ones who had a Netflix subscription.

The first show happened on January 6 and was huge. It needed to be. Some big stars were brought in to help increase viewership. Hulk Hogan made an appearance, and so did Dwayne Johnson, also known as, of course, The Rock. There were also some huge matches that included Roman Reigns versus Solo Sikoa and CM Punk versus Seth Rollins.

Of course, the first episode in the new Netflix series was set up to be a massive success, and it was. The show brought in 5.9 million viewers, according to Netflix's Tudum. The likelihood was that the second show and beyond would see some dropoff because Hogan and The Rock are obviously not going to appear every time.

WWE Raw on Netflix has dropped 49 percent of its viewership since the initial show

Still, it was unlikely that many expected viewership to dip so much in the preceding episodes. The January 13 program had 3.7 million viewers, and the January 20 show had 3 million. This indicates that weekly viewership will probably end up being around that last number. The January 27 numbers were not yet in.

Is Netflix and WWE happy with how many people are watching so far? We don't know, and we won't know. Netflix is still learning how best to live-stream events. After the terrible bandwidth issues of the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight in November, more recent events, such as the NFL games on Christmas Day, have gone off much better.

There is not a streaming concern with WWE Raw, but a 49 percent drop in viewers is not a good thing either. Netflix is obviously available globally so one might expect the WWE event, which also has a global pull, would bring in five million or more viewers weekly. Perhaps the number does grow to that, but currently, viewership is trending the opposite way.

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