Bellator 157: Dynamite 2 drew 601,000 viewers on Spike TV Friday night per Nielsen. The event is a 25% drop from September 2015’s debut of the MMA/Kickboxing show on the network.
Bellator 157 featured Rampage Jackson facing Satoshi Ishii in the main event. Jackson won via split division in an uninspired catchweight matchup.
The event was in increase from last week’s Bellator live event but is the lowest-rated tentpole event since Scott Coker created these quarterly events.
Notably, last June’s tentpole event drew 1,580,000 viewers on Spike TV. The event featured Ken Shamrock facing Kimbo Slice.
On another note, Sports TV Ratings reports that the one-hour special honoring Kimbo Slice which preceded Dynamite 2 drew 416,000 viewers. It drew 222,000 viewers in the adult 18-49 demo.
Payout Perspective:
The Kimbo Slice lead-in to Dynamite 2 seemed to have helped, somewhat, with the ratings. The College World Series on ESPN (Coastal Carolina/TCU) won the time slot (Dynamite ran at same time) in the sports cable TV ratings with 888,000 viewers. The ratings for Dynamite 2 have to be disappointing and the question arises whether the MMA/Kickboxing mix is something combat sports fans want to see.
The event seemed especially weird doing mma and kickboxing the followed by a strictly kickboxing event. The mma/kickboxing shows seem to do good overseas but it doesn’t appear that is what the American audience wants.
Furthermore the death of Kimbo Slice leaves a huge void for Bellator. The talk about wanting to do 4 “tentpole” events a year but unless I’m mistaken only 1 tentpole not featuring Kimbo drew over 1 million viewers, and that was the “grudge match” between Ortiz and Bonnar.
They need to realize without Kimbo, they’re gonna need to come up with some bigger matchups because the idea of Dynamite Shows or King Mo/Davis are not gonna cut it. Start with Rampage/Ortiz and go from there,imo.