MMA Junkie reports that FX’s first prelim show for UFC 142 scored 880,000 viewers. According to MMA Junkie, the viewership number is smaller than any of the “UFC Prelims” on Spike TV but beats out all three specials aired on ION Television.
As MMA Supremacy points out, “UFC Prelims” never dipped under 1 million viewers when it aired on Spike TV.
Payout Perspective:
While the numbers may seem disappointing, there appears to be room to grow. The NFL Playoffs probably didn’t help with the rating either as the prelims competed with Tebowmania. Despite the New England blowout, the NFL (and Tebow) held a huge audience – 34.2 million viewers. We will have to wait to see how the Prelims would do without such stiff opposition.
Do we know what #s FX normally gets for that time slot?
Obviously Spike was a great platform for the UFC. It’s going to take some time to build up to similar numbers on FX (if Fuel can get to Ion numbers that would be a victory). Casual fans used to tuning into Spike are going to have to learn new behavior which will take some time. Switching the prelims between Fuel and FX will add to viewer confusion make the learning process longer.
I was switching back and forth between the prelims and the game. I’m sure 879,999 other people were doing the same. It was interesting to note how many Brazilian fighters were thanking God after their victories while Tebow was remarkably silent on the subject. I guess God prefers Brazilians to Floridians.
I believe you can chalk these numbers up to Tebowmania. But if the Fight Night this Friday doesn’t do a lot better, you’ll have to blame the switch to FX.
Im sure being a Brazil card and having no start power in the states also played a role.
I agree with Jack. With no NFL until Sun., Friday night’s card should garner much better ratings.
I posted this on another site
Everything is relative. For the week, FX average primetime rating was 1.048 million viewers, of which only 576 thousand were 18-49 year olds. So the UFC numbers seem pretty good, especially for Saturday night which is usually the lowest rated TV night and going up against NFL Football. If the numbers stay below 1 million for the next year, then ….