MMA Fighting reports UFC on Fox 9 did a 1.8 national rating and received a total of 2.8 million viewers after further calibration to include overrun and west coast viewership.
The overnight ratings received an average viewership of 2.41 million viewers. According to MMA Fighting, the show’s strongest markets were Tulsa, which did a 3.7, and Sacramento, which did 2.8.
As pointed out with the initial ratings, it’s the lowest rated UFC on Fox event held during football season. Since its partnership with Fox, the UFC has experienced a bump in its network shows when the NFL is promoting its shows on Sundays and during its college football games.
The UFC lost its time slot among network programming to children’s shows (Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman) and a rerun of the much-talked about live “Sound of Music” featuring Carrie Underwood.
Payout Perspective:
The official numbers confirm that this card underperformed. Obviously the injuries played a part. We will see if its next network fight in January can lift the ratings. For those wondering, UFC on Fox 10 on January 25th will feature network mainstay Benson Henderson versus Josh Thomson. The card will take place the week before the Super Bowl.
Depends how you slice it. When the UFC delivers a strong card this time of year they get a good return. But that put on a weak card. What we did get is Mighty Mouse drawing higher ratings than he did in his last fight on Fox. Now does that mean Might Mouse has picked up viewers due to fighting on Fox now 3 times as headliner? Or is that bump in ratings due to being football season?
The truth is we do not have good enough data to answer that. This time of year we only have strong UFC cards to go by. We cant assume this time of year the UFC gets 4 million with any card they throw together. There is nothing to suggest that and it is illogical to think that.
What seems to be playing out(and we will have to wait to get a larger sample) is the cards are drawing based on the cards strength and the time of year isn’t as important as first thought. This is the first time they didn’t have a strong proven draw or stack card in December and January. In addition to that they have put their weaker cards in the middle of the year and they got this type of rating. I don’t think it is a coincidence the strength of those cards match this card. The events also shared headliners and other fighters.
So these ratings are neither good or bad. They are as expected. But I do think we all expected the UFC to put a little more effort into the event. Given it being their December card. They have gotten us used to getting a 4 million viewer card and that isn’t what they give us.
BS has a good point, except I beliecve it has more to do with “star power” or “draw power” than overall card strength. Put NIck Diaz on the card or C.P. Sonnen and it would likely have done better numbers, regardless of who they fought.
They should be getting a bigger NFL bump, it is plastered all over the screen during the Fox games on Sundays. It would have been interesting to see what the ratings would have been if the Hunt/Silva fight was on the card — would we have had that “moment” where social media effected real time ratings? I think so.
That is what I meant by stronger card. Just having Rampage in his last fight vs Glover. Added almost 2 million viewers to Mighty Mouse’s first fight on Fox. This card had nothing like that. To be honest, as much as I like the Condit/Brown fight, I don’t think it would have helped the ratings get to 4 million. I do think it would have got to 3.5 but that still wouldn’t have compared to the 4 million rated events in the past.
Something interesting to consider. As hard as it is to know right now if/how much the NFL helps the UFC on Fox. I’m pretty sure that info would be useless anyway. Because after the Super Bowl when Fox heavily promotes both sports and ties them together. Its going to have an effect of some degree regardless. So it will take the NFL season either from no effect to some effect. Or from some effect to a lot of effect.
You can not blame the UFC for putting a weak card together. It was stacked originally. If pettis vs thomson and condit vs brown were on the card like they originally planned we would not be saying this. Those fights fell out and they had to replace it. You can’t expect them to find a fight equivalent to those on short notice. Remember the MM vs Joe B fight was scheduled for FS1. Imagine if all these fights went as planned, they would have done really good ratings for both.
So you can’t fault the UFC for NOT putting together a stacked card because they did. Unfortunately the 2 best fights were the ones that needed to be replaced. They did put forth the effort, they still gave us a title fight and bumped up Lauzon-Danzig fight which most people thought would be FOTN. What were they supposed to do under the circumstances? MM-Joe B was a no brainer when Pettis pulled out. Even more crazy was there were a total of 6 fights that had to be altered due to injuries.
There is absolutely a positive correlation between drawing power and ratings. But even with all 4 fights being 155lb and under, I am surprised it did middle of the road compared to other FOX cards. I don’t think the UFC was caught off guard by these numbers. If condit-brown and pettis-thomson did these numbers then we should absolutely be alarmed. Ratings were decent. Adults 18-34, Males 18-49, and Males 18-34 is their target demo and UFC delivered FOX a #1 in those demos. A win is a win especially when they had a main event that was originally scheduled for cable.
True point. Hardcore fans already know when the events are and are going to watch. The real questions are how many casual fans tune in for UFC on Fox (and progress to true fans for FS1 and PPV) because they keep seeing the add, and how many non-fans will tune in for the first time (or give it a second chance) due to seeing and hearing the promo during the NFL game.