Bellator 106 which featured Michael Chandler vs. Eddie Alvarez on Spike TV Saturday night scored a 1.1 million viewers. According to a SpikeTV/Bellator press release, the show peaked at 1.4 million viewers.
Per Spike TV/Bellator press release:
The highly-anticipated rematch of two of the best lightweights in the world, Bellator MMA’s Michael Chandler and Eddie Alvarez, delivered record ratings on Spike TV. The telecast delivered 1.1 million viewers (9:00pm-12:45am), the most-watched in Bellator event history and the most watched mixed martial arts show on television this fall.
The “Chandler-Alvarez II” fight card peaked at 1.4 million viewers at 11:17pm and reached its high mark with Men 18-49 with a 1.1 rating for the Alvarez-Chandler bout. The telecast also ranked #2 in cable in its timeslot with Men 18-49.
Payout Perspective:
Big numbers for a show that went really long as it went 45 minutes past its estimated time so a lot of folks that had DVR’d the event did not get to see Chandler-Alvarez. However, Spike is showing the main event before its live show this Friday, November 8th at 8:00pmET/PT It’s a good sign for the company considering it went up against sports on network television including The Breeders Cup on NBC (0.4 share in 18-49 demo/2.8M viewer avg) and the big Miami-Florida State college football game (2.6 share in 18-49 demo/8.12M viewer avg) on ABC and Oklahoma St.-Texas Tech (0.7 share in 18-49/2.43M viewer avg) on Fox (via Television By Numbers). MMA Payout will have more on this soon.
Spike > FS1
The one telling thing is that the show peaked well before the main event. It looks like it would be Strauss/Curran that started the slide. I would be very curious to know just how many saw the main event.
Spike is replaying Eddie/Michael before this Friday’s live card.
Luke Thomas and most on Bloddy Elbow and post I read thought the show would do over 1.5 Million maybe even close to 2 million – So how great is this actually ?
The reason it might have peaked earlier is because it went on late, since the show was tape delayed in the west, they aren’t used to seeing fights on after midnight.
If you taped the show, you probably missed the main event, unless you added on an hour instead of 30 mins.
I agree with Sampson. MMA content seems to be a better fit for Spike than for FS1.
Tape delaying in the West must have hurt viewership there.
I DVRd it, but was smart enough to DVR the show after it as well, so I was able to catch the main event.
“the most-watched in Bellator event history and the most watched mixed martial arts show on television this fall.” – That’s stretching it as far as breaking news. “This fall”? Really? Might as well go with not go with – “the most watched MMA show on Saturday the 2nd of November”.
Tape delaying usually helps get more viewers in the west coast, tomorrows card’s prelims start in the west coast at 2:00 pm when most people are at work.
Only really the Olympics and premium cable Boxing (unless you have an east coast feed) do tape delayed sports now and well MMA that aired on Spike TV (UFC then Bellator)
This could be a blessing in disguise for Bellator. Fans eager to watch the fight will seek out this content which will drive ratings up. UFC better watch out. If Dana White had hair left he would be ripping it out.
Exactly the numbers I expected.
I can’t wait for the reply on Friday as even though I scheduled the record tome for an extra 2 hours I somehow screwed up taping and missed the last 2 fights. My fault but thanks to Spike and Belatore I will be watching (or at least dvring) again.
I think this shows there is an audience for good fights, be it UFC or Belatore but Belatore needs to have more high quaity cards to maintain this momentum.
Bellator 106 was solid! Good job Bellator!