Bellator Fighting Championships made its second season debut earlier this month to what its now reporting was a record television audience for the organization.
Bellator Fighting Championships made its FOX Sports Net debut April 8th as FSN’s highest-rated national program on both Thursday and Sunday night. The Thursday premiere lifted the network’s prime time ratings by an impressive 60 percent compared to the same time period average in the 2nd Quarter of 2009. In addition, the Bellator 13 re-air was also up 57 percent from the 2nd Quarter time period average on Sundays.
Bellator 13 from the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood , Fla. , was the highest-rated program nationally distributed by FSN on Thursday, April 8th and Sunday, April 11th.
The show was especially successful in attracting males under the age of 54 to the network. Bellator 13:
– Increased FSN’s Thursday night 18-34 male audience by 143 percent;
– Increased FSN’s Thursday night 18-49 male audience by 153 percent; and
– Increased FSN’s Thursday night 25-54 male audience by 180 percent.
Bellator also showed the ability to draw strong local ratings for individual FSN affiliates. For example, Bellator 13 drew a .85 local rating for FSN Pittsburgh, where the event aired live and in prime time.
“In our first week on FOX Sports Net, we were able to drive a substantial increase in viewership to the network nationally,” said Bellator founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney. “We are confident that working with FSN, together we can significantly build upon this strong foundation. My focus from day #1 has been to produce and promote compelling, competitive tournament based MMA programming designed to appeal to MMA fans just like me. My belief is that our tournament format, combined with great fights, world class fighters and strong attention to production quality will continue to increase viewer support for our events on Fox Sports Net.”
Payout Perspective:
Bellator has put on a fantastic product thus far, but it won’t matter unless people actually see it. So, obviously, these ratings are encouraging from the organization’s perspective. However, I’ll caution that long term success via the Fox Sports Network has proven to be quite illusive for MMA promotions; both the IFL and Pride failed to gain any sort of traction by using the network. This newest television distribution deal featuring FSN, NBC, and Telemundo should just be considered a stepping stone to bigger and better things.
UFC, KOTC, EliteXC, IFL, PRIDE, Affliction, M-1, and now Bellator have all been on FSN, I believe. The ratings news is really positive to hear though.
FYI: I hear that the Bellator next day Telemundo broadcast on HD is excellent. Much better production and extra content since the event is edited …. just in case anyone wants to check it out.
So what was the actual rating?
Top Rank boxing’s debut show in January on FSN did a 1.5
Can we get a number on how many viewers? Cause while the percentage increase looks fantastic I’m having a hard time figuring out how good this actually is without having an actual viewer number to relate to that percentage.
cool, I like the Bellator show, good to see it’s gaining popularity.
I think .85 puts them in around a million.
jv,
I don’t think .85 is around a million in this case. That is a local rating for Pittsburgh.
This is how you arrive about converting ratings to viewers. You take the total number of viewers in that market and divide it by 100 and each 1% is 1 rating point.
So if a market had 10 million viewers and got a 1.0 rating that would be 100,000 viewers. So if that Pittsburgh market only has 10 million viewers then that .85 rating would be 85,000 viewers. Please someone correct this if it’s wrong.
This is why I was curious as to what the actual viewer number was. Cause if the amount of viewers was very low to begin with then we are still talking about a low overall viewership even with the increase. Not to say that the percentage increase isn’t still something to brag about but if the actual viewer number is still pretty low them I’m not overly blown away and without them mentioning actual viewer numbers in the press release it makes me wonder.
jv,
I don’t think .85 is around a million in this case. That is a local rating for Pittsburgh.
This is how you arrive about converting ratings to viewers. You take the total number of viewers in that market and divide it by 100 and each 1% is 1 rating point.
So if a market had 10 million viewers and got a 1.0 rating that would be 100,000 viewers. So if that Pittsburgh market only has 10 million viewers then that .85 rating would be 85,000 viewers. Please someone correct this if it’s wrong.
This is why I was curious as to what the actual viewer number was. Cause if the amount of viewers was very low to begin with then we are still talking about a low overall viewership even with the increase. Not to say that the percentage increase isn’t still something to brag about but if the actual viewer number is still pretty low them I’m not overly blown away and without them mentioning actual viewer numbers in the press release it makes me wonder.
@ Amy
Uhhh… why did you copy my comment? You didn’t even add nothing to it???