MMAPayout.com has learned that Spike TV’s broadcast of the UFC 115 Prelims drew an average audience of 1.3 million viewers on Saturday night prior to the PPV broadcast. However, the show did peak at over 1.5 million viewers for the fight between Tyson Griffin and Evan Dunham.
In terms of demographics, the program earned a 1.4 in the M18-34 and a 1.2 in the M18-49.
Payout Perspective:
The main goal of these prelims is to push fans towards the PPV product, but they also serve as a means for the UFC to provide its younger fighters with exposure they wouldn’t otherwise get on the undercard of these fights. Yet, taking those objectives into consideration, it’s really been difficult to establish just how effective these broadcast have been: the ratings related to the prelims certainly haven’t proven to be a solid indicator of the success of the PPV, nor has the quality of the match-ups proven to correlate with the ratings of the broadcast.
It’s a crap shoot at this point.
However, I am inclined to think that a trend will bear out over the next year. My guess is that, just like the Aldo vs. Faber prelims, the entertaining quality of the fights will determine the number of additional impulse buys. Thus, I suppose we ought to start keeping track of just how good the prelim fights were (as opposed to how good the match-up is on paper or how anticipated the PPV event is, itself).
I think the prelims are great. How many mainstream fans may not realize their is an event that night and stubble apon the prelims that is basically a hour long reminder of the PPV. Also like you said a great fight can inspire people to make the purchase even those who maybe thought the card wasnt great.
In addition to PPV impact the UFC gets some of it mid level names like Dunham on TV. It is never bad when you give the public free fights. Lack of meaningful free fights and fighters is IMO what makes boxing the old mans sport that left the youth behind. When you get 1 million viewers with a show lie that it is a success for the UFC and Spike. It cost very little and the rating rival some high cost TUF shows and UFNs.
I imagine with over 1m viewers the prelims will stick around… it’s a win/win, the UFC is already running a PPV so basically there’s no, or very little, additional production cost and Spike gets a good number of its key demo to watch, and again, I highly doubt Spike is kicking in very much if any for production and they get to pimp their other original programming.
Question?…Do they have any kind of tracking system that lets them know if Prelim viewers eventualy buy a ppv?
Also..Wouldnt it be a good idea if ufc had/promoted some sorta co-co-main event(if that makes scence to anyone) on the live prelim broadcasts.It could be something like”Winner of this match gets title shot!”or Why these 2 fighters are the best prospects at X weight class” or even or even bring in one star power matche with fighters like Kenflo,Keith Jardean,Deigo Sanchez,(kinda like how they do with UFN) then run it throught the ufc hype machine and plug the hell outta of it through their diffrent media outlets.
wouldnt something like this help tv/ppv ratings? also what would be the Cons of doing something like this?thanks for answering!