MMA Payout has learned that Saturday night’s UFC 166 Prelims earned an average of 628,000 on FS1. The ratings were the lowest since switching to FS1.
UFC PPV Prelims on FS1
UFC 164 Prelims 809,000 viewers
UFC 165 Prelims 722,000 viewers
UFC 166 Prelims 628,000 viewers
Payout Perspective:
The prelims had exciting bouts but lacked star power to draw fans to the fights. This usually occurs on the prelims but the steady decline in viewership on FS1 is a bad sign. College Football and MLB were the top live events on Saturday as the top 5 showdown between Clemson and FSU scored 5.87 million viewers and the annual rivalry between USC and Notre Dame drew 3 million. But the MLB Playoffs won the night with 8.5 million viewers.
Ufc is played out.
Agreed, not great numbers. Still waiting for the buy rates for this event and the last one.
How come meltzer dosent release his unofficial ppv buys for the last Jones vs gust? Lol….Dana white hard sells with his interview with rogan before the end of the broadcast….
aint,
The UFC is not played out. But it has plateaued. I think we can safely put to rest the notion that MMA might compete with football, baseball or basketball to become one of the top three sports in the US. With that said, it can still be lucrative.
Tops,
Dana is a promoter. His job is to hard sell his product. That’s what promoters do. You say it like it’s an insult, but trust me, he knows he’s a promoter, and he knows he’s giving you the hard sell. I don’t think he’s ashamed of it. It’s his job. He’s actually fairly good at it.
Jason,
The decline in UFC viewership on FS1 is disappointing. Do you know if that’s a trend across the board with FS1, or is that a UFC thing? Do you have average viewership trends for FS1? I can’t find any articles after August.
@Diego
I will take a look. But, UFC programming is the best draw on FS1 ratings-wise outside of College Football.
It’s all of Fox Sports 1, Fox chose to put on #2 Oregon vs #16 Washington on FS1 instead of Fox and it drew 1.76 million viewers (second most watched telecast in FS1 history, behind the UFC’s first show), if that game was on Fox it would have drawn a much higher rating.
It will take a few years before it catches on, NBCSN are going through the same problems but if both chip away at ESPN’s sports rights, they might be able to at least beat ESPN2 in 1 or 2 years.
Fox will be thrilled with the UFC’s ratings, the UFC wont but they still have a 4 shows on big Fox and cross over advertising during NFL games.
Good luck at chipping away at espn. they bought the rights to show the new college football championship once the bcs goes away. They paid in the neighborhood of 7billion for it. It will take decades for fox to catchup.
All this platform jumping has really hurt the UFC, and it doesn’t help that their brand is now completely over-saturated. More and more fans will opt to skip prelims, cards etc. unless there is a big name that attracts them to it.
I remember there was a time when you couldn’t stop watching all things UFC, as long as it was UFC it would draw big. But multiple platforms, platform jumping, over-saturation has made it so that now all the fans care about are big names. It is not going to surprise me if in a few years from now two popular fighters are able to score big PPV numbers without the UFC brand attached to it, the trick is going to be able to get out of the contracts while still relevant and if that ever happens then we can say hello to the boxing model in MMA.
The fans only ever cared about big names. the ufc by itself had never been, and never will be a big draw.