MMA Weekly reports that this week’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter on Spike TV tied a season low with an average of 1.2 million viewers. Yet, Dana White has put a positive spin on the dismal ratings.
Via MMA Weekly:
Overall, this season’s numbers have established a significant drop from Season 12. Six weeks in, this season is averaging 1.33 million viewers, whereas Season 12 average 1.7 million viewers per episode.
There are several contributing factors. Critiques have pointed to the lack of elimination fights to gain entrance into the fighter house, little drama on the show, and lackluster fights.
Dana White addressed the issue with eliminating elimination fights during the UFC 129 Fan Expo.
Via MMA Junkie:
“We had a lot of obstacles this season,” White said. “I don’t even know if I should talk about this, but I will because that’s me. In our deal with Spike TV this season, we don’t have as many episodes as we’ve had in the past. We figured that we would be killing some of the reality. We wouldn’t have enough time to tell stories. But we really, really made a big mistake not having these guys fight to get in the house. I guarantee you that will never happen again.”
White indicated that the time slot (and the competition it faced) contributed to its ratings as well. Still, he stated that the longevity of TUF and the fact that it still garners over 1 million viewers is still an accomplishment.
Payout Perspective:
Does Dana White sound like Bjorn Rebney when it comes to apologizing for poor television ratings? Seriously, in this instance Rebney’s spin on the Bellator television situation seemed much more positive than White. Its interesting that we now hear the problems with the time slot for TUF. Yet, a month ago, the response was to deal with it. Perhaps the lack of elimination fights or outlandish personalities have contributed to the poor ratings. Going into this season one would think that the top PPV draw in the past couple years (Brock Lesnar) would garner some viewers.
With the dismissal of Lew Polley, the last chance at controversy left the building. This week’s fights were much better and we can only hope more of the same from hereon out.
One thing that seems to be overlooked is the reason behind Brocks huge success. He was larger than life and had the aura of invincibility. He is coming off 2 very poor performances where he was embarrassed one which he lost. He is no longer champ and coming off a loss and only being a coach is why no one cares to watch. The ratings reflect a average season without Brock. It just goes to show he isnt added viewers because the UFC picked the worst time to make him a coach. I wonder how the ratings would be different if they got him a win before making him coach? When he was still champ people would watch. He was intriguing and people wanted to know more about him and how he trains and the secret to his success. Now people realize he is nothing special and might only have a few fights left in him.
Just his performance vs Carwin caused his fight with Cain to have 2 million less gate and 100K less PPV buys with a much more marketable opponent. He even won the Carwin fight. I think the loss to Cain is really going to kill his drawing power whoch we have started to see on TUF. He will still draw better than anyone else. But i look for the fight with Santos to only do 800K buys even with the TUF push. In the end the UFC should have give him a warm up fight to get his credibility back. Sorry for the rant.
the ufc bubble has burst