The staff at MMAJunkie are reporting that WEC 47: Bowles vs. Cruz drew an average household audience of 373,000 last Saturday on the Versus Network.
This past weekend’s WEC 47 event on Versus scored a 0.46 household rating and 373,000 viewers, MMAjunkie.com today confirmed.
The ratings were down sharply – 42 percent in all – compared to World Extreme Cagefighting’s prior show, WEC 46 (640,000 viewers), which took place in January and benefited from proven draw Urijah Faber and a main-event title-unification bout between Benson Henderson and Jamie Varner.
WEC 45, which took place this past December, drew 330,000 viewers.
Payout Perspective:
When you look closely at the situation, 373,000 seems to be in the general ballpark of what we should have expected from this card. Bowles vs. Cruz as a headline didn’t provide many of the casual fans with huge incentive to tune-in, because neither of them are well-known, nor was there any kind of story line told about either one of them. Recent title fights like Cerrone-Henderson and Brown-Aldo didn’t draw that much more; and in both cases you could argue each of those main events was more attractive than WEC 47’s.
However, I also tend to think that this WEC 47 card was over-looked by many in the MMA community, because of the WEC’s imminent PPV debut in April. The great majority of WEC talk in recent weeks has involved WEC 48’s price point, stacked line-up, possible competition from Strikeforce/UFC, etc. There really wasn’t a lot of discussion re: Bowles vs. Cruz until late in fight week.
….
The ratings are probably underwhelming to many within the MMA community, but I think that’s mostly because we’re all used to seeing the numbers the UFC has done on Spike TV in recent years.
It would be interesting to see what you’d get out of a WEC program that aired on Spike. Likewise, it will be interesting to see how the UFC fares on Versus in another couple of weeks, and what sort of impact that might have on future WEC cards.
On another site forum, a poster did the numbers and said it was 1/3 of what it should be even without DirectTV subscriber base. I think this spells pretty much doom for any hope the PPV will do over 100K buys.
I dont think the UFC/WEC/Zuffa had any delusions of WEC having 100K PPV buys. Every Pride event with the exception of the 2 US shows were getting around 20K buys. Affliction couldnt break 100K. With the WEC budget they dont need anywhere close to 100K to be a success. 20K would be a success and a great starting point.
Hi Brian,
20K would yield approx. $500,000. Not bad I suppose, but I think they would hope for at least double that. They should be able to at least reach Affliction #’s as those are the hardcores so 90K is not out of the question.
Affliction had some of the biggest names in MMA at the heavier weights. Also people are not used to paying for Wec so the percieved quality is not there for most. More importantly Affliction spent millions marketing their show. Hundereds of thousands of dollars on Billboard in time square. Hundreds of thousands to sponsor a racecar. Posters in clothing stores across america. Not to mention the media attention such a show attracted. The WEC is running a fight card that is just a couple hundred thousand. THe gate along ussually pays all the expenses of a card. That 500K from 20K buys is all, mostly, profit in the world of PPV where everyone else in MMA has lost money. I would call that a success. Im sure the WEC wil try to grow from there. But they dont expect and know they will not reach 100K. If they do get 100K buys. Then Strikeforce is offically done as they would have no chance to be the #2 promotion in the US. The WEC would be making to much money as their expense is very low and another large chunk of the market gone.