Here's How the Wild Card Rule Affected WWE's Ratings This Week

After Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live both hit dangerously-low ratings last week, with Raw dropping below two million in the third hour while SmackDown hit its lowest rating since before the brand split, WWE rolled out a new plan to try and give its ratings a boost this week with the Wild Card Rule.

Simply put, wrestlers from one roster will be freely allowed to appear on the other show at a moment's notice. Vince McMahon explained that the number of wrestler appearances would be limited to three, then changed it to four later in the show. But given that both shows broke that rule in back-to-back nights, that number likely won't be strictly enforced.

Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer reported this week that while Vince McMahon wanted to keep the strict brand split going, officials for both NBCUniversal and FOX reportedly pressured the company to boost ratings by having its top stars on both shows.

So did the plan work? Based on this week's ratings the answer is yes, though not by a large amount.

Raw hit 2.24 million viewers this week, a slight improvement from 2.15 million the week prior. The good news is that the third hour climbed back above two million, which can likely be attributed to Kofi Kingston defending his WWE Championship against Daniel Bryan in the main event.

Meanwhile SmackDown's ratings got a boost of nearly 100,000, reaching 1.93 million. Unfortunately for the Blue Brand, Tuesday marked the third time this year that the show has failed to bring in more than two million viewers. With Roman Reigns overseas with the Raw side of the upcoming European tour, the show was without its top star and relied on another WWE Championship match, this time involving AJ Styles and Sami Zayn.

While the shows can't rely on world championship matches every week, it does offer the opportunity for interesting matchups each week. The Usos also popped up on SmackDown to challenge for the vacated SmackDown Tag Team Championships, which wound up resulting in a solid tag match where Daniel Bryan and Rowan became the new tag champions.

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