Bellator 98 ratings for Saturday night’s season 9 debut scored 437,000 total viewers according to The MMA Report. In comparison, its debut on Spike TV this past January scored an average of 938,000 viewers.
Saturday’s three hour show faced an uphill battle with college football and NASCAR on at the same time as the live event. Specifically, Notre Dame-Michigan was the marquee game on ESPN which grabbed 8.65 million viewers.
Payout Perspective:
The opposing sporting events alone probably spelled the reason for the rating. Notwithstanding this, the need to postpone the Fight Master final and scratching Joe Warren from the card also contributed to a night Bellator did not plan for a couple weeks earlier. While we may not know if ratings would have been better if these two fights would have gone through, it may have given Bellator a better chance. With Bellator heading to Friday nights for Season 9, we will see if it can draw better ratings.
These are the lowest ratings for a live Bellator event on Spike. I doubt the move to Fridays will get their ratings back up to last season averages, but we will see. The Mayweather is not going to help even though it is on Saturday.
To be fair to Bellator, they get moved about a lot, Thursdays, then Wednesday then Saturday and now Friday and they have only been on Spike 9 months.
There ratings need to go up though, Spike is a top 25 rated cable company, Bellator lowers their average ratings, so it hurts Spike.
For those that care,
Bellator on Saturday overall drew 437K viewers. The main event, Shlemenko vs Cooper, did 595K viewers for their bout and peaked at 663K.
This is just horrible any way you spin it. They need to get those ratings up and fast, like duck says above this will hurt spikes overall ratings numbers and they won’t keep them around forever with ratings like this, Dam thats horrible