Bellator MMA’s Dynamite 1 drew an average viewership of 800,000 viewers on Spike TV Saturday night. The third “tent pole” event for Bellator was ranked #2 in the timeslot in the coveted male 25-54 and 35-49 demos on cable behind ESPN’s college football per Nielsen sources.
The event aired from 9-12:42am ET and then replayed immediately after. The highest quarter hour for the event occurred in the 9:15-9:30pm ET time period when it drew an average of 930,000 viewers. This would mean that the highest quarter occurred during the King Mo-Linton Vassell fight. Mo won the two round fight.
Notably, the show on Spike TV went up against the Ole Miss-Alabama college football game on ESPN. The game, which saw Ole Miss pull off an upset of Alabama drew 7.6 million viewers.
Bellator “tent pole” events under Scott Coker
November 2014 – Ortiz-Bonnar: 1.24M viewers (peak 2M)
June 2015 – Slice-Shamrock: 1.6M viewers (peak 2.1M)
September 2015 – Ortiz-McGeary 800,000 viewers (peak 930K)
Payout Perspective:
Clearly this was the worst rating out of the 3 “tent pole” events. Whether the mix of kickboxing and MMA, or the tournament turned off viewers, it’s a definite decrease from the past two events which set the bar for these quarterly shows. You cannot discount the impact of a huge SEC college football game on ESPN to detract from viewers. Also, Showtime replayed the Mayweather-Berto fight although that was likely less of a factor. We shall see if the replay which occurred later in the evening but in prime time on the west coast picked up viewers. MMA Payout will keep you posted.
Not bad. But compared to ESPN, the numbers are pretty underwhelming. I had the feeling mma would eventually become the next big thing but compared to other sports it’s barely on the radar. And the signal is getting weaker and weaker.The UFC isn’t doing any better either. mma in general doesn’t seem to have a bright future. Hopefully Fedor will revive old school MMA because at this point, mma is incredibly boring.
“but compared to other sports it’s barely on the radar”
Like field hockey, hand ball and synchronized diving?
MMA was never going to be mainstream. Casual fans will tune in for some big shows, just like they do in boxing, but the vast majority of fights are watched only by hardcore fans. Anyone who thought that MMA would be bigger than the big US sports (football, baseball, basketball and hockey) was always headed to disappointment. Like they said in 60 minutes, “A sport with a move called the flying guillotine isn’t for everybody.”
“And the signal is getting weaker and weaker.”
Actually it’s holding steady.
“Hopefully Fedor will revive old school MMA because at this point, mma is incredibly boring.”
Ahh, now I get it. You’re a troll.
Bjorn Rebney > Scott Coker
“And the signal is getting weaker and weaker.The UFC isn’t doing any better either. mma in general doesn’t seem to have a bright future. ”
Right, that is why they are going to set a record for revenue this year. They are much bigger now than they were when everyone claims they allegedly peaked during the Lesnar era. Network tv, ppv records, constant expansion equals growth.
I doubt they will ever get anywhere near the top 3 sports, maybe close to hockey in the US, but other than White, who expected that? Boxing isn’t there either. Combat sports don’t operate the way team sports do.
This was horrible! I expected them to be around 2 million viewers. Obviously they expected a huge crowd they got from past Tito fights. So much so they decided to make the Fedor announcement.
What’s worse is there was tons of empty seats. This was a huge disappointment!
Scott Coker is just preparing Bellator for its sale to the UFC.
I used to be a big fan of Bellator, but the format changes, especially the killing of the tournaments/earn-a-shot-at-the-title, make it like every other non-UFC organization. Bellator fights aren’t important anymore (same as WSOF, RFA, Legacy, etc.), not surprised to see that interest is dipping.
Bring back Rebney. Only guy that really cared about his business and how to differentiate his product.
“Bring back Rebney. Only guy that really cared about his business and how to differentiate his product.”
Exactly. Every MMA company comes out and tries to copy the UFC. That has failed over and over again. MMA is not popular enough for 2 UFCs.
Coker’s Bellator is just another bad copy. Rebney got Bellator’s ratings high enough that the UFC was getting scared. Now they don’t have to worry about competition in ratings or money battles for popular fighters (remember how Rebney made the UFC give Melendez a great deal to keep him).
I have no idea why people think Coker getting involved with anything is a good thing. He’s horrible.
@ Diego: I don’t like the excuse “This sport isn’t for everyone”. Boxing isn’t for everyone either, but it’s doing a lot better than mma. Even arm wrestling draws about 300k viewers. This year it drew about 500k. Table tennis isn’t for everyone either, but table tennis championships drew about 400 million viewers worldwide this year.
I think the problem is that fighters spend more time talking BS than fighting. And when they do fight, they are boring to watch because they fight under too many regulations. After all those nasty trash talks you’d expect to see a good fight but all you get is a boring, innocuous pillow fight. Back in Fedor’s day mma was a lot closer to a real fight. I miss those days. I want that kind of mma back (minus the steroids and the other PEDs).
@d (iego, under another name): You seem to have problems accepting real facts and statistics. You’ve been told several times that UFC 173 and 174 drew together under 300k PPV and then you proceeded to discount those numbers. You’re beyond reason (all fanboys are). 4,5 million is the highest number of PPV buys the ufc has ever recorded. And that was 5 years ago. This year only Mayweather – Pacquiao sold over 4,5 million PPVs. How much did the UFC sell overall this year?
Anyway, TUF is drawing fewer and fewer viewers with every episode. I guess watching freaks with inflated egos talking BS 90% of the time instead of actually fighting ain’t as entertaining as before. The gimmicks are wearing out.