MMAPayout.com has learned that last night’s debut episode of UFC Primetime: St-Pierre vs. Hardy was the most watched episode in the history of the series drawing an average audience of 1 million people. Not surprisingly, the program scored well in the male 18-34 and 18-49 demos with a 1.1 and 1.0, respectively.
Payout Perspective:
If these levels of interest convert on the same scale as they did for UFC 94, we’re easily looking at the highest grossing PPV offering since UFC 101 – somewhere in the range of 700,000 – 850,000.
Granted, the context isn’t exactly the same this time around – the UFC has less momentum, now, than it did in January 2009 – but this card will also benefit from a second title fight and an additional UFC Countdown (independent of this Primetime series). Moreover, I think we’d all agree that GSP’s popularity has grown since then.
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While the most recent numbers have been poor, it’s important to emphasize that these ratings and buyrates are only short term indicators of success. They are inherently volatile and sometimes tend to reflect external factors that will have little bearing on the long-term success of the business.
The UFC has signed numerous international television deals in the last few months and will take its show to several new markets this year. Expansion often comes at the price of short-term revenue/sales; that’s just the nature of the trade-off.
However, like we’ve been preaching, the coming months are absolutely something to write home about as an MMA fan. So, get excited and tell all of your friends.
Good numbers, good sign for the PPV.
But the sky is falling!. The UFC is DEAD! 1 million what? Wow. Ok. Maybe I got ahead of myself.
With Mir and Carwin on the card as well, I say it hits 800,000k. Ufc 112 will be right around the ball park of 650k. Ufc 113 around the same. I say in the next three ppv events we see over 2 million buys. All those injuries have turned around. This means big $ for the UFC these upcoming months.