The numbers are in and last week’s Dream 12 drew a 1.7% share. Additionally, the headline bout featuring Overeem and Thompson, which ended in just 33 seconds, drew the largest audience of the night, but for only 2.7%.
Payout Perspective:
Dream 12 was the organization’s first caged event, but the experiment – set to become something of an annual event – failed to draw a solid rating in comparison to previous events:
2008-07-21 DREAM.5: 10.0% (Primetime slot TBS)
2008-09-23 DREAM.6: 9.0% (Primetime slot TBS)
2009-03-08 DREAM.7: 2.4% (Midnight slot TBS)
2009-04-05 DREAM.8: 3.4% (Midnight slot TBS)
2009-05-26 DREAM.9: 16.2% (Primetime slot TBS)
2009-07-20 DREAM.10: 2.0% (Late Night slot TBS)
2009-10-06 DREAM.11: 12.7% (Primetime slot TBS)
2009-10-25 DREAM.12: 1.7% (Late Night slot TBS)
(Source: Nightmare of the Battle)
Dream owns quite the set of volatile ratings, but a lot of the fluctuation can be explained by the time slot and different lead-ins the programming receives: Dream 9 had the benefit of Japanese boxing hero Daisuke Naito as a lead-in and a primetime slot from the Tokyo Broadcasting System – Dream 12 had neither.
Of course, it didn’t help that the main event featured Overeem against a very over-matched James Thompson, and that a fighter like Sakuraba isn’t the draw that he used to be.
I think one of the strangest thing about Japanese MMA events is that they’re usually on a Tuesday night or some other bizarre time slot. It is quite rare for the Japanese to schedule weekend MMA events for some reason.
Another thing that might be helpful for them is to compress their events a little. I know they put alot into the production and entertainment aspects of their events– much more so than the UFC, but it seems to me that they’re stretching the time between fights too much.
The UFC events have a strict time format with very little dead space in the broadcast. This helps keep the momentum building up towards the main event. The Japanese events on the other hand usually go at least half an hour before the first fight. I love watching events start to finish because its more exciting with less fast forwarding, but with such huge gaps it’s hard not to skip through it. If watching the events live were an option for me, I would probably get distracted with other things.
I’m very grateful that Dream now offers the HDnet broadcast with Schiavello and Guy Mezger. I wasn’t a huge fan of Guy’s commentary at first, but he is definitely settling into his role. Schiavello was also a bit overwhelming at first, but he has really grown on me with his razor sharp wit and THE BIG KABOOSH! Truly one of the best commentators our sport has seen.
Excellent write up. Appreciate you guys covering all aspects of MMA, even outside of the US.