NCAA tournament helps push SmackDown overnight viewership below 2 million

With competition from live sports down the dial in the form of March Madness, SmackDown delivered its third smallest audience of the year for FOX on Mar. 19.

The blue brand hasn’t seen much of an upswing since Royal Rumble, so it’s as impossible as ever to pinpoint what to attribute their latest television numbers to. But competition from first round NCAA men’s basketball tournament games certainly played a role in last night’s show averaging 1.95 million across its two hours.

Ratings is the key demos were unchanged from the week before, and good enough to earn second place behind CBS’ hoops coverage.

Here are the fast nationals:

Showbuzz Daily

And here’s our running tracker of overnight numbers for the current season. You can also access the tab of year one numbers here (all data still via Showbuzz Daily).

Probably nothing to get worked up over, although this is the latest piece of evidence that Edge doesn’t move the needle much. WWE spent the week promoting his first SmackDown match in 11 years, and, well...

We’ll see if Fastlane fallout and the final push to WrestleMania 37 has a positive effect next Friday.

For complete results and the live blog for SmackDown this week click here. To read a review of the night’s events click here. For a full playlist of the show click here.