MMA Payout has learned that Bellator 102 received a viewership average of 675,000 viewers which made it the 2nd largest audience of the season. It peaked at 958,000 viewers.
The highest quarter hour for Bellator was 866,000 viewers for the Cheick Kongo main event. An immediate rerun of the event starting at 11:12pm PT scored an average of 460,000 viewers.
Bellator 98 – 437,000 viewers
Bellator 99 – 660,000 viewers
Bellator 100 – 700,000 viewers
Bellator 101 – 649,000 viewers
Bellator 102 – 675,000 viewers.
In addition, attendance from the Visalia Convention Center was 1,482 with 604 of those tickets being comped. The net gate was $73,410.43.
Payout Perspective:
After Bellator 102, the average viewership is 624,200 this season. Not counting the poor debut, it would be averaging 671,000 viewers. Based on the numbers, it looks like Bellator has established a core audience on Fridays. MLB Playoffs ruled the night with 4.1 million for the first game on TBS and 3.5 million for the second game which opposite to Bellator 102. In addition, WWE’s Smackdown did 2.5 million on Syfy.
Wow, so Bellator is starting to catch up and even out-gun UFC fights on FS1?
Not surprising
Well it is if you ignore the fact that the UFC got a 0.5 in the 18-49 demo and was in the top 50 and Bellator got a 0.2 and wasn’t ranked in the top 100.
What’s more important to advertisers, total viewers or higher key demo rankings?
@Leon
Key demos as advertisers want to focus in on the demo that it thinks will buy its product/service. Total viewers is great but if they all fall outside of what you want to sell its meaningless.
Key demographics!
Bellator can have some good fights. But its because the skill is so low. You get a lot of bums slugging it out or complete blow outs. It truly is amateur leagues.
The UFC makes their money from PPVs and gates. A superior demo, but smaller audience doesn’t help the UFC even if FOX is cool with it. Fact is, the UFC has about the same number of eyeballs as Bellator these days, which is not a good sign for them.
That isn’t true at all. You cant pick and choose which event of the UFC you want to compare to Bellator. Yes the lowest rated shows on FS1 are getting close to the highest rated shows on Spike. But the UFC has many more programs getting eyes. Their higher rated shows on FS1 get many more eyes. Their shows on FOX get millions more eyes. Not to mention there is a group of people who buy PPVs who don’t need to be sold and may not watch the smaller free cards or TUF.
I do agree it is important for the UFC to get as many eyes as possible. But there is no comparison to Bellator. The UFC has monetized its fan base. Bellator has not. Higher ratings are useless if the fan base will not spend money to support or follow the product.
Still doesn’t make sense to me. I’m sure the 675k viewers were in the “key demo.” I highly doubt you have seniors or “older” folks watching Bellator – it’s still 18-34.
0.2 just means they have a smaller piece of a larger pie yes? If the UFC has nearly the same total viewers but 0.5, the pie may be smaller, and their share greater.
That’s not what it means. It measns they have the same amount of pie (if overall viewers are the same) but its made up of small pieces of different kinds of pie. Where as the UFC has the same amount of pie with a large portion of it the same flavor rather than a mixture.
If both get 1 million viewers and 500K are young males for the UFC and 200K young males for Bellator. Which are you going with if you are a company selling a product that appeals to young males? So advertisers pay more for the UFC. Of Bellator had a high number of people fro a different demo then it would still offer some value even if that demo isn’t as sought after as young males for example. But Bellator doesn’t. They are just a mixture of many smallers demo’s.
Ufc sucks.