News broke recently via Tubefilter stating that WWE had climbed to the top of the YouTube mountain and has the #1 most watched channel on the website for the month of August, amassing a stunning 456,365,680 views.

To those familiar with the popular channel it may come as little surprise to see such numbers as a plethora of entertaining content is available at just the click of a button. Most interesting amongst these videos is the Monday Night Raw highlights which are published every week for free.

It has been no secret that Raw ratings have been awful lately (Dave Meltzer has been reporting and speculating), so could this large number of YouTube hits be a negative force against the live ratings?

Well, having a 3-hour show condensed into a short set of highlight videos that removes the shitty adverts and replays is astronomically more appealing to the casual fan – and even some more enthusiastic watchers can understandably see this as a more efficient and enjoyable way of consuming the current product.

Providing this free content is something WWE may want to review in the future. Whilst it is a generous offering to fans across the globe, less and less people may tune in on Monday nights as a result; especially given the increasing press around the tidal wave of views highlighting the videos’ availability.

However, the finger of blame cannot be solely pointed at a highly popular YouTube channel; Monday Night Football has recently kicked off so more fans way be heading that way, plus, there is a usual slump this time of year (between Summerslam and Royal Rumble), but these lows are never as pitiful as in 2015.

Above all of these issues though, it is likely that people are not watching the flagship show because they are simply uninterested in the current weekly product. I personally feel there is a lot of fun stuff to see: US open challenge, New Day, Kane’s double persona, Reign v Wyatt etc. but not everyone will agree and clearly not everyone can be pleased at all times.

To conclude then, I shall re-address the initial question; is WWE’s YouTube success having a negative impact on Raw ratings? Personally, whilst other factors are definitely apparent, this colossal YouTube viewership is surely driving some people away from the time-consuming live watching and towards the convenient and speedy video highlight reel.