MMA Fighting reports that last Saturday’s World Series of Fighting 4 shown on NBC Sports Network received its best rating of the 4 with an average of 264,000 viewers for a 0.23 rating.
According to MMA Fighting, it did 0.18 among viewers 18-49 and 0.30 for males 18-49.
WSOF 1 – 198,000 viewers
WSOF 2 – 210,000 viewers
WSOF 3 – 201,000 viewers
WSOF 4 – 264,000 viewers
Payout Perspective:
Before we enter into the weekend and focus on the UFC’s debut on FS1, last Saturday’s WSOF event has to be considered a positive considering that the main event (Tyrong Spong-Angel DeAnda) did not include a former UFC fighter. Thus, the show was not driven by names of guys that had been in the UFC. Also, the ratings show a significant jump in viewership. WSOF 5 might draw less ratings considering its on the same night as the biggest boxing match in years: Alvarez-Mayweather.
The next card has arlovski. I’m looking forward to it but the boxing card is the x factor. hard to predict. Anyway I’m rooting for mike kyle. Dude always either wins in emphatic fashion or goes out swinging. i see him pulling the upset just cause arlovski is known for gerring ktfo.
I just dont see them lasting long, they are doing less than 1/2 what WEC cards did, they are doing 100k gates but 200k plus payrolls, I just cant see them being around in 2 years unless something big happens.
Also very stupid for them to make the next card the same day as Floyd/Canelo.
WEC was around for years before the UFC bought it out and got it closer to mainstream. WSF has a ways to go before it is courted by a Viacom type company.
WEC isn’t on tv for years. When you are on tv there is cost involved. These cost are what drove XC and IFL into the red and out of business. With payroll and production costs. They have to be losing money. If ratings don’t at least double. They wont be around very long.
They have the same thing hurting them that wasn’t helping the UFC. There is nothing else on that network. I cant remember ever watching anything else on that network. But I could be wrong. With no lead in and nothing drawing people to the network at any point of a day. Its going to be hard to grow the ratings. At least if they had day time viewers for something they can reach them with ads on their own network. But its going to be tough.
I give WSOF credit. They seem to be more into the fights and less into the BS gimmicks that Bellator are into. They both have their flaws that need to be fixed. But WSOF comes off as a lot more professional promotion. Bellator still has that King of the Cage feel to it that isn’t good for TV.
Boxing viewership on NBC Sports 2013
January 19 140,000 viewers Sergey Kovalev vs. Gabriel Campillo
http://sonofthebronx.blogspot.jp/2013/01/nfl-network-nbc-sports-network-nba-tv_25.html
February 23 203,000 viewers Vyacheslav Glazkov vs. Malik Scott
http://sonofthebronx.blogspot.jp/2013/03/nbc-sports-network-nba-tv-mlb-network.html
June 14 201,000 viewers Bryant Jennings vs. Andrey Fedosov
http://sonofthebronx.blogspot.jp/2013/06/nbc-sports-network-nba-tv-mlb-network_21.html
August 3 209,000 viewers Eddie Chambers vs. Thabiso Mchunu Tomasz Adamek vs. Dominick Guinn
http://sonofthebronx.blogspot.jp/2013/08/mlb-network-golf-channel-nbc-sports_9.html
Does anybody have any idea what ratings the channel normally does in that timeslot? That would help put the numbers into perspective.
Not sure. Spike shows a lot of cheap reruns of shows. So even if it is a better rating than usual. It still might not be a good option for Spike. Bellator live fights is im sure much more expensive than reruns of sitcoms or drama’s.
The ratings are bad enough that we can safely assume that whatever fee NBC Sports pays to WSOF to air their events is not enough to cover the cost of WSOF’s salaries and event costs.
Actually this is pretty good for NBC SN, besides the NHL Playoffs they rarely do ratings over 200,000.
Main Event Boxing does similar ratings on there as well and I would guess they would have a similar budget.
Here’s a link from January talking about it.
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2012/12/nbc-sports-network-tv-ratings-extremely-low/
That was before the NHL Playoffs which did really well this year and they have invested big in Premier League Soccer and F1 Racing but those two aren’t mainstream in the US.
The ratings might be good for NBC Sports, but I doubt the money makes sense for WSOF for very long. Their fighter payouts are too high to offset whatever money they get from NBC. WSOF is probably running a negative on investor money, they are very different from the other sports on NBC.
Agree with RD. It is fine for NBC. But not WSOF. Those other sports have other revenue from other tv deals, large gates, and sponsorships. WSOF has small gates and no real revenue streams to cover the expense gap left from what they get from NBC.
The same thing happen to IFL. They got good ratings for My Z or whatever it was called. But they didn’t get paid much money. Every time IFL ran a event they lost over $1 million. Elite XC lost $55 million in 2 years. They lost money on every event they ran on Showtime the first year. Strikeforce did get a better TV deal when they started. But even it didn’t allow for growth. As salaries started to rise on their stars. It seems the writing was on the wall and they wanted out imo.
Bad tv deals are very common in MMA. The UFC had to pass up many deals back in the day before they got one that made sense and wouldn’t kill the sport. While others took just any deal to get on tv for their ago and lost their ass.
Spike TV with Bellator is the only network to really make any kind of commitment to MMA outside the UFC.
Another ufc plant. wsof paying its fighters too much? earlier bs compared them to ufc fighters pay. bs can’t keep his notecards straight.