MMA Payout has learned that Bellator MMA Live on Friday (11/8/2013) received an average viewership of 683,000 viewers. The show peaked at 904,000 viewers.
Season 9 (Fall 2013):
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, 684,000 DVR +3
Bellator 105 – 520,000 viewers, 684,000 DVR +3
Bellator 106 – 1.1M viewers
Bellator 107 – 683,000 viewers, 782,000 DVR +3
Season 9 Average: 657,800 viewers
Payout Perspective:
Bellator 107 ranks as the 3rd most watched Bellator event of the current season, only behind Bellator 106 (1.1M) and Bellator 100 (700K). The main event last Friday featured Cheick Kongo defeating Peter Graham by unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27) in the heavyweight tournament finally bout. The peak viewership for the event took place during the Kongo/Graham main event, where viewership topped out at 904,000 viewers. The season 9 average viewership is now 657,000 after Bellator 107. The DVR+3 numbers for the event drew 782,000, which is an additional 14% of viewers.
The overall viewership number was aided significantly last week by Bellator 106, as 1.1M viewers tuned in to Spike TV to catch the much talked about Alvarez vs Chandler II headlined event.
It was a good night of fights so I’m happy they got the bump from the fight replay. We’ll see if they can keep the viewers. We’ll see how much drawing power Quinton has left this week; hopefully they bring in even more viewers.
Bellator 107 was a pretty good card. Season 9 has had some outstanding fights thus far! Also, I think that Bellator is smart for having the Rampage / Beltran fight headline Bellator 108. Although both of the Russian heavy-weight fighters are very good, they are now not too well known in the US. So, since the Rampage / beltran fight will be the last fight of the evening, that will help ensure that people will see the heavy-weight title fight between the two very tough Russian fighters, which will in turn add to their marketability amoung American MMA fans. Good move by Bellator here! For only being around for about 5 years now, Bellator is really doing well in such a relatively short period of time. Good for them! Plus, it gives the fighters another place where they can earn a living, which gives us fans more MMA competitions to watch!
I disagree. Bellator isn’t doing well at all. Strikeforce did well in less time in MMA with much less to work with than Bellator. They also managed to not alienate a large portion of the MMA fan base with lies and mistreatment of fighters and treating fans like idiots. SF bought better talent, created better talent, had better production, and got as many viewers on a much less distributed premium network. Bellator has been given a golden opportunity and have managed to botch everything they touch. They get a tv deal then tie themselves to TNA. They sign King MO then slap a TNA label on him turning people against him. They sign big names like Tito and QJ only to botch the match up. They rush out a PPV only to botch it due to their faith in a old fighter who has never been dependable. BUt the PPV was doomed because the fight placement they choose and the main event match up they set. Their reality show was a epic failure. Their lied about their 205 champ being hurt so they can all but strip him of his title. In a short time they have screwed over Vegh, Alvarez, and Ben Askren. It I a miracle they are even still in business to be honest.
BrainSmasher: There is a big difference: Strikeforce was doing basically one event every few months (for most of its existence), Bellator is doing quite similar number of events per year as the UFC. Tenths per year.
Lot of things you argue against Bellator are also not things Bellator did, but things that someone thinks Bellator did (which is often a lie, myth, just opinion, misconception or something else)
How convenient. Everything I said that everyone in the MMA community has said just happens to be wrong for the sake of Bellator. The 5 month old doctors excuse was very much real. Vegh saying he wanted to fight on PPV and wasn’t hurt is real. That means the fighter wanted to fight and the doctors were not keeping him from fighting. So that makes the interim title they created, done so under false circumstances.
Also SF was running their challenger series. So they were running a lot of shows also. SF ran 16 in 2011 and Bellator ran 25 in 2012. 16 events is way more than 1 event every few months.