MMA Payout has learned that last Friday’s Bellator MMA Live received an average viewership of 615,000 with a peak of 800,000 viewers.
Bellator 98 – 437,000 viewers
Bellator 99 – 660,000 viewers, 704,000 DVR+3
Bellator 100 – 700,000 viewers, 736,000 DVR+3
Bellator 101 – 649,000 viewers, 710,000 DVR +3
Bellator 102 – 675,000 viewers. 774,000 DVR +3
Bellator 103 – 539,000 viewers, 638,000 DVR +3
Bellator 104 – 615,000 viewers
Payout Perspective:
Bellator 104 saw a slight increase from last week’s ratings. Its peak occurred during the first quarter of the show. The show featured the semis of the welterweight tournament. According to Television by Numbers, the MLB Playoffs won the night on cable with an average viewership of slightly over 6 million viewership. WWE’s Smackdown scored an average of 2.6 million viewers on Friday as well.
It’s certainly within a range. They used to be around the 200k mark on MTV2, now they are around the 650k mark (although with DVR +3 which I don’t believe is how they were reporting in their MTV2 days).
Do we have a sense of whether that is enough to keep them alive? I think we can assume that the PPV is not going to do very well. 150k buys would be considered a massive success (compared to the TNA PPVs which are 1/10th of that) and the future of Bellator (again much like the future of TNA) will be tied to TV ratings.
The DVR+3 numbers are nice to tout total viewership with, but they’re meaningless to advertisers. The live ratings are all that matters in terms of keeping Bellator afloat. I think they’ll be fine for the time being; I honestly thought the ratings this fall would be far worse.
MV,
Can you give me a sense of how much ad revenue those kings of ratings are generating per show?
kinds of ratings, not kings of ratings