WWE Friday Night Smackdown to visit Rolling Loud 2021 Festival

Bengaluru, July 8: WWE is all set to make its presence felt at the popular hip-hop festival this year as the promotion officially announced that the July 23 edition of SmackDown on FOX will feature matches from the Rolling Loud Miami 2021 festival.

As per the WWE’s touring schedule, the July 23 SmackDown is currently scheduled from the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio. So the episode will feature a split-site broadcast with multiple matches from Rolling Loud from Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida while the remainder of the show will go down in Cleveland.

WWE is now promoting the upcoming show as the first-ever collaboration between the company and a major music festival despite the fact that WWE NXT had conducted matches at the United Kingdom Download Festival for a few years before the COVID-19 pandemic brought it to a halt.

Rolling Loud 2021 will be headlined by Travis Scott, Post Malone, and A$AP Rocky. WWE Superstars will get the privilege to share the same stage with those rappers.

“What Matt Zingler, Tariq Cherif, and the entire Rolling Loud team have built is spectacular,” said Scott Zanghellini, WWE Senior Vice President, Revenue Strategy & Development in a press release. “We couldn’t think of a better partner to deliver such a unique WWE experience to fans during the July 23 edition of Friday Night SmackDown on FOX.”

“I grew up on Sweet Chin Music, mesmerized by the spectacle that Vince McMahon and co have built at WWE,” said Tariq Cherif, Co-Founder/Co-CEO of Rolling Loud Miami festival. “The idea of weaving our two storylines into one world, one must see event, is electrifying.”

“And I quote! If ya smell…what the WWE and Rolling Loud…is…cookin’! Give me a hell yeah!,” said Rolling Loud Co-Founder/Co-CEO, Matt Zingler.

FOX will be pretty excited to secure this cross-brand platform for SmackDown as they always want to get some mainstream attention to the WWE shows.

But they’re not certainly happy with the show's numbers. The July 2nd edition drew an average of 1.861 million viewers on FOX, according to Nielsen, via Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics.

The number is down 5.58% from last week’s final SmackDown viewership of 1.971 million viewers for the post Hell In a Cell edition. This past Friday’s viewership also marked the lowest of this year and the second-lowest since SmackDown moved to FOX in October 2019. The key demo rating was the second-lowest of the year and the third-lowest on FOX.

SmackDown featured a few earlier advertised segments – WWE Hall of Famer Edge’s presence on the show, a Falls Count Anywhere Money In The Bank Qualifier Match between Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn.

Zelina Vega also returned to the show which was leaked out, online shortly before showtime. But it should be noted that WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns missed the show.

This week’s SmackDown marks the final edition from WWE ThunderDome at the Yuengling Center in Tampa, Florida as WWE returns to the road, starting from next week.

The July 16 Friday Night episode will kick off shows with live fans in attendance from the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas as viewerships and ratings are expected to go higher.