There is some good news and bad news with the Smackdown brand. The good news is that the ratings on Smackdown Live are above average from what they were doing on Thursday nights. The bad news is that the attendance is down for the shows. We noted earlier this week that they drew a bad house for the Monday night live event in Virginia. In some ways, it’s understandable since they’re running on the same night as Raw and Monday Night Football but the photos from the show looked really bad. If you didn’t see them, you can check out the photos by clicking here.
Dave Meltzer reports that the WWE Backlash show drew just 7,000 fans. There were tons of comp tickets being given away so the paid attendance is much less than 7,000. Apparently, there were tickets being given away at night clubs and a Comic book convention on the day of the show. The show was great from a workrate standpoint but it may end being the least watch pay-per-view of the year. There’s no way of knowing how many people watched the show since WWE doesn’t disclose viewership numbers for their WWE Network programming.
Going forward, things should pick up with AJ Styles defending the WWE World Championship next month against John Cena at the No Mercy pay-per-view.
