MMA Junkie reports that Saturday night’s Bellator 50 received an all-time low of 114,000 viewers. Although it tried a special start time (7pm ET/PT) to avoid conflicting with other events, the ratings reflect otherwise.
A re-airing of the card on the same night garnered just 94,000 viewers although the rebroadcast occurred during Mayweather-Ortiz.
Payout Perspective:
Bellator 50 was the first card where Spike.com streamed its prelims worldwide. It would be interesting to see the viewership for those fights. Despite its efforts, its clear that the busy night of fights and football contributed to the low number. Certainly, Bellator hopes that the ratings will bounce back but going up against Rampage-Jones this Saturday may not be the weekend for the rebound.
Tough weekend for Bellator. Having to switch the times around certainly hurts them by making it tough to actually find the fights. The fact that it was a big night for boxing and there was free UFC on Spike doesn’t help. Toss in all of the other sports offerings and it’s no wonder ratings suffered.
On the bright side, I’m sure MTV2 realizes that any show they put up that night would have been clobbered. Bellator probably did better than anything else MTV2 could have shown. Maybe.
Diego,
I tend to agree but I think there has to be concern this fall with all of the UFC events on the same weekends as Bellator events in addition to college football. Don’t think the UFC ran as many events last year.
Bellator’s got a lot of shows coming up that are scheduled the same nights as UFC events. Combined with a slough of NCAA football games each Sat., and it’s clearly rough going from here on out. No need to panic yet, but if the ratings stay consistently under 200,000 viewers, I question whether it would be smarter for MTV2 to air reruns instead, which may do no better but are cheaper.
If Bellator wishes to improve their ratings, which will be all but impossible without a big marque fight, they need to go head to head with the UFC. That way at least the “hard core” fans may switch between both shows. Trying to accommodate a time slot so as to not conflict with the UFC will not work. If anything we have learned from Wrestling, it is that head to head competition is what draw’s the best ratings.