More young men are watching WWE Raw

The Oct. 2 episode of WWE Raw did the show’s best numbers since Labor Day, or before the start of the NFL regular season. Wrestlenomics reports it averaged 1,511,000 viewers, and a .48 rating with 18-49 year olds across its three hours.

Compared to the week before, it’s a slightly better total audience number (3% than Sept. 25’s 1.47 million) and a significantly stronger rating (12% better than the prior Monday’s .43). That can be probably be attributed to the smallest Monday Night Football audience of the season — 16.6 million watched the Seattle Seahawks beat the New York Football Giants on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 & ESPN Deportes; each of the three previous weeks topped 20 million with the season opener followed by back-to-back doubleheaders.

Which is all well and good, but what really piqued our attention was the demographic groups the gains came from. In addition to the 18-49 year old bump, Wrestling Observer says the rating in the 18-34 demo was up 33%:

The strongest gains were with men 18-34.

The Raw audience being younger is more obvious when comparing the show with one year ago. While viewers were down six percent from last year, the 18-49 rating was up 17 percent and the 18-34 rating was up 49 percent even with the decline of homes that get USA Network.

What’s getting those (generally) 20-something year old dudes to tune in? Wrestlenomics has the highest rated segment as the one where Rhea Ripley was castigating Dominik Mysterio for losing the NXT North American championship. Which could just be because it was at the start of the show, or it could be...

We’ll let you make your own determination.

You can revisit every segment on the Oct. 2 Raw with live blog, recap & review, and video highlights.