One Friday night wrestling show fared worse against the Olympics than the other

The ratings are in for Feb. 4, and going against the Winter Olympics wasn’t good for either pro wrestling show — but one saw its numbers drop off more than the other.

SmackDown was down, but not by a lot. The 2.151 million viewers were only about 3% less than the Friday before. The .51 rating among 18-49 year olds only a steeper ~9% decline. Not what WWE and FOX would normally hope for from the Royal Rumble go home, but with the Opening Ceremony from Beijing drawing nearly 11 million and a 1.97 in the demo for NBC — not bad. Olympics coverage was the only thing that finished better than SmackDown for the night.

It wasn’t as rosy a picture for Rampage. AEW lost slightly more than 10% of its overall audience from Jan. 28, coming in at 540K for the latest episode. The .20 with 18-49 year olds was a 20% down from the week prior. The show finished tied for seventh among cable originals, where it had competition from the NHL, NBA, Olympics, and news.

More competition from the Games this week, too. We’ll see how each show fare.

Numbers via Showbuzz Daily