Where did all the fans go?

The night after WrestleMania 31, Raw did 5.36 million viewers. This year after WrestleMania 33, Raw did 3.77 million viewers.

That means in two years, the WWE successfully made 1.6 million causal viewers go away.

Do you think those fans ever come back to Raw/WWE? And how do you think the WWE could get them back, now that the Attitude era props are all done?

​It doesn’t seem likely. Consider WCW, which was still drawing 3 million viewers per show even at the end of their life, and those viewers disappeared when WCW died and didn’t return. The problem with RAW, as we’ve harped on many times, is that it’s just too long and you can directly trace the erosion of viewership to going three hours. If I want to watch, say, Riverdale, because my friends all tell me it’s awesome even though Archie is THE WORST​, it’s easy. You watch the latest episode and usually there’s a quick recap at the beginning to get you up to speed. If I’m a new wrestling fan and I want to watch RAW, holy shit. I have to watch an entire three hour show and then research 20-30 years of backstory in order to get the self-referential nonsense and tributes to itself? Uh, no thanks. That’s why they’re not replacing older viewers with new ones, and it’s why the people who remain pop for the Hardy Boyz like Jesus himself just walked into the arena.