MMAPayout has learned through Nielsen sources that Dana White’s “The Fighters” debut last night on the Discovery Channel drew an average of 347,000 viewers.
The 347,000 viewer average was not good enough to place it in the top 100 cable shows for the day. In fact, there were 9 telecasts on Discovery alone that had a larger audience yesterday.
Payout Perspective:
Simply put, “The Fighters”, whos executive producer is UFC President Dana White, is off to a very rocky start. In terms of competition, History Channel’s Pawn Stars had the highest cable TV viewership last night with 5.17M. In terms of sport & entertainment competition, TNA on Spike TV last night drew 1.56M viewers while NBA on TNT drew 2.65M viewers.
Why the UFC is currently investing time in a Boxing reality TV show is not clear, but there has been quite a bit of talk recently of the UFC perhaps promoting boxing PPVs. There has been constant talk of Roy Jones Jr wanting to box either Anderson Silva or Nick Diaz since last year and even Dana White saying that promoting a boxing PPV is not out of the question. Jumping into the Boxing reality TV venture may be one of trying to take yet another slice of the PPV pie by trying to recreate the magic TUF created for Zuffa’s MMA venture. With recent retirement talk from GSP, Anderson Silva, and many of the UFC’s biggest PPV stars, diversifying their PPV portfolio may not seem like such a big stretch as we head to a rough 2014.
[…] and endorsed by UFC president Dana White, that mid-January debut brought in 347,000 viewers – not enough to score in cable’s Top 100 shows for the day. At a recent UFC press […]