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"Neck And Neck?" Not Quite. Here Is The Spin Free, P.R. Free Smackdown Numbers vs The NFL Draft - And It Isn't Pretty

Over the weekend, WWE's top of the industry public relations department was once again hard at work, carpet bombing wrestling media with the news that Smackdown's demo ratings were "neck and neck" with the NFL Draft on ABC.

Be warned - whenever WWE blatantly performs one of their P.R. hits, it's almost always a red flag that they are either attempting to bury one story or get ahead of another. In this case, WWE knew that Smackdown did not fare well on Friday night, and were attempting to set the narrative that they were instead "neck and neck" (the verbiage each tweet touting the numbers used, verbiage obviously pushed by P.R.) with the NFL Draft. The goal was to get that repeated all weekend long, so that when the actual rating dropped on Monday, the narrative that Smackdown was (say it with me) "neck and neck", would have already been set, leading people to believe that WWE was on par ratings wise with the NFL, and getting ahead of the fact that Smackdown was actually down big vs the week prior, down big year over year, and in fact, did their lowest numbers of 2024. This is the game, and they play it all the time.

On Saturday, WWE made sure you knew that the fast national estimates looked favorable, at least on the surface. Here is what they sent to various wrestling media outlets, information that was not publicly available as of Saturday afternoon when the outlets shared it, proving it was WWE who provided it:

WWE Draft on FOX:
Average Viewers P18-49: 679K (#2)
P18-49 Rating: 0.5

NFL Draft on ABC:
Average Viewers P18-49: 682K
P18-49 Rating: 0.5

It should be noted that the NFL Draft aired across four networks on Friday night (ABC, ESPN, ESPN Deportes, NFL Network), yet WWE's P.R. slyly compared Smackdown to ABC numbers only. They are counting on most people not knowing the NFL Draft is a muti-network simulcast, and simply being impressed that Smackdown went "neck and neck" with the mighty NFL. The P.R. blast also curiously omitted the total viewership, which they always seem to include when covertly providing Smackdown vs Rampage fast nationals. I wonder why.

The final cumulative numbers tell a different story. In the end, not only did Smackdown lose outright to the ABC portion of the NFL Draft (2.7M, .61 for the NFL Draft on ABC, 2.1M, .58 for Smackdown), but cumulatively, it wasn't even close. The combined numbers of the four simulcasts of the NFL Draft were 5.06M viewers (including ESPN Deportes), with a 1.37 in the 18-49 demo (demo information was unavailable for ESPN Deportes, although at ~14K total viewers, the 18-49 number would likely be statistically insignificant for our purposes).

Smackdown's 2.14/.58 was the lowest viewership of 2024. According to Wrestlenomics, Smackdown was down 8% in total viewership vs last week, down 8% in 18-49 vs last week, down 11% in total viewership vs the last four weeks, and down 16% in 18-49 over the last four weeks.

Of course, you would expect Smackdown to be down week over week against the NFL Draft. No real shame in that. HOWEVER, Smackdown was also down ~13.4% year over year against the same Friday NFL Draft coverage, coverage that did worse this year (down roughly 9%). So Smackdown was down big year over year against weaker NFL Draft numbers than the year before.

It should also be noted that the NFL Draft started one hour earlier than Smackdown, meaning Smackdown mostly went head to head with Round 3 of the draft, as opposed to Round 2, which typically averages more viewers.

What WWE P.R. wants you to think: Smackdown went "neck and neck" with the mighty NFL Draft

What actually happened: Smackdown got smoked by the NFL Draft 1.37 - 0.58 in the demo, was beaten by nearly 3M total viewers, was down 8% vs last year, down 11%-16% vs the last four weeks, did its worst viewership of the year, and was down over 13% vs the same show comp last year going against weaker NFL Draft numbers.

Be media literate. Spot the red flags. Question sources. Always be wary of WWE P.R., always think about what they are trying to get ahead of or cover up.