The final Smackdown on FOX will air tonight live at 8PM ET and the show will be moving back to cable on USA Network with next week’s broadcast.

Smackdown moved to FOX in October 2019, giving WWE added exposure thanks to the wider reach of network television.

The five-year deal, valued at $1.025 billion, was announced in June 2018.

“At FOX we are thrilled to welcome WWE to the FOX Sports family and bring SmackDown LIVE to broadcast television,” said Eric Shanks, President, COO and Executive Producer FOX Sports at the time. “We are huge fans and know that together FOX Sports will be the leader in live events for the foreseeable future.”

The deal was supposed to end in October, but FOX was going to move Smackdown to FS1 for the last few weeks. Instead of taking the hit, WWE opted to move to USA Network a few weeks earlier.

Smackdown’s premiere on FOX drew 3,869,000 viewers back in October 2019 and to this day remains the most-watched Smackdown on FOX. The only other time the show came close to that number was the Christmas Day episode a year later when Smackdown aired after an NFL game and benefited from the lead-in viewers. That show did 3,303,000 viewers.

Viewership has been up and down over the last five years, with 2020 and 2021 being the worst numbers on the network. In the three months in 2019, Smackdown averaged 2,475,000 viewers. In 2020 it averaged 2,182,000 and it continued to decrease to 2,081,000 viewers in 2021. In 2022, numbers went back up to an average of 2,123,000 and last year it increased further to 2,220,000.

This year, the show has done the best numbers on FOX since 2019 with an average of 2,299,000 viewers and a 0.64 average in 18-49.

The show has consistently ranked #1 on Friday nights among the 18-49 demographic on both network and cable television but that will surely change now as the reach of USA Network is less than that on FOX and shows on network television typically do better than on cable.

It remains to be seen what kind of numbers Smackdown will be able to pull on cable on Friday nights but it’s safe bet that it will be fairly less than what Raw is currently doing on the same channel.