This past weekend, the UFC held Ultimate Fight Night 37: Gustafsson vs Manuwa from London’s O2 Arena. The main event aired on the United Kingdom’s Channel 5 network, a first for the UFC in the market, which holds a 4.4% share of total monthly TV viewers in the UK.
According to British TV website, DigitalSpy, 591,000 (3.01%) tuned in to see the main event between Alexander Gustafsson and Jimi Manuwa at 9PM. At 8PM, an episode of NCIS drew 629,000 (2.73%) served as a lead in for the UFC main event. As for viewership from other networks during the same time-slot, Channel 4 drew 630,000 viewers (4.35%) for an airing of X-Men: The Last Stand. BBC Four airing of “Salamander” drew 852,000 viewers (3.9%). ITV3 aired an “Endeavour”, which drew 799,000 viewers (4.07%). BBC Three’s airing of comedy “Blades of Glory” drew 606,000 viewers (3.06%). UFC’s UFN 37 main event had the lowest viewership and share percentage compared to the listed network competitors above for the 9PM time-slot.
Numbers for the entire card, which aired on BT Sport 2, are not yet known, but UFC events on the network typically do less than 50,000 viewers. Highest rated event to date was UFC 167: GSP vs Hendricks, which drew 54,000 viewers. The previous UFC event which took place in the UK (UFN 30: Machida vs Munoz from Manchester) and aired on BT Sport 2 drew 32,000 viewers.
In terms of Fight Pass viewership numbers, it is estimated that a couple of hundred thousand viewers signed up for Fight Pass. MMAPayout has estimated the fight pass viewership range for this event to be around 100,000-200,000 streamers, which is around the same range as the most watched streamed fight on Facebook before this event (Ben Henderson vs Clay Guida). Interestingly enough, it is also around the same range as Fuel TV (FOX Sports 2) historical viewership numbers.
Payout Perspective:
The UFC event did decent numbers for its network debut on Channel 5, but came up short from being a great debut. It was beaten by most of the Channel 5’s major competitors for the time-slot and paled in comparison to previous boxing events aired on the network. Tyson Fury vs Dereck Chisora in 2011 drew 2.26M viewers and peaked at at 2.9M viewers. Tyson Fury vs Kevin Johnson on December of 2012 drew 1.25M viewers and peaked at 1.63m. In April 2013, Tyson Fury vs Steve Cunningham drew 1.5M viewers. Also last year, a boxing bout between Kid Galahad vs James Dickens drew 858,000 viewers on the network. In comparing both numbers, keep in mind that boxing in the UK is much more mainstream and popular than MMA.
In terms of MMA comparisons on the network, UK’s local MMA promotion, BAMMA, debuted on Channel 5 with BAMMA 6. That show was headline by Tom Watson vs Ninja Rua in 2012 and drew 500,000 viewers.
Flop… as usual
Not a flop, but certainly not a huge number. I think it’s a decent base to build from. And there’s no way that it would have done Fury-like numbers, he’s one of the most popular athletes in the UK (soccer players not-withstanding).
we dont have the total information without the viewers in Btsports, also interesting to know the ratings in Sweden .
The ufc didnt anounce they were going to be on ch 5 until 1 week before the event. I doubt that is much time to properly promote this fight on this ch. I am sure not everyone even knew that the ufc was going to ve on ch 5
Sky Sports
September 7th – Glasgow Burns v Beltran – 136,000
September 23rd – Liverpool Matthes v Woodhouse – 75,000
October 6th – London Joshua Pro Debut/Quigg v Salinas – 146,000
October 26th – Sheffield Brook v Senchenko 197,000 (Undercard on SS3 got 44,000)
November 2nd – Hull Luke Campbell Hull Show – 127,000
November 30th – Canada Bellew v Stevenson – 28,000 (3am)
December 7th – Germany Barker v Sturm – 104,000
December 14th – London Purdy v Bundu/Mitchell v El Ouazghari – 100,000(Undercard of Sky Sports 3 got 69,000)
2014
February 1st – Cardiff Selby v Munroe/Joshua – 106,000 (Undercard of SS3 got 24,000)
February 22nd – Hull Coyle v Brizella/Campbell – 88,000 (replay did 40,000 on Sunday)
March 1st – Glagsow Burns v Crawford/Joshua – 153,000
Channel 5
September 14th – Galahad v Dickens – 880,000
November 16th – DeGale v Davis – 750,000
2014
March 2nd – DeGale v Khatchikian – 759,000
http://checkhookboxing.com/showthread.php?23152-Boxing-Viewing-Figures-This-Season
There are a few mitigating factors to take in to account when considering whether this was a success or not. The biggest of which being that this was only aired on C5 with about a week’s notice. There was no significant promotion in mainstream media like there would be given months of notice. This has been a common problem with UFC UK getting very late notice TV deals (as was evident by the shoddy C5 studio), and therefore missing out on any strong promotional possibilities.
A smaller factor is the bizarre way that C5 billed the UFC event as ‘wrestling’, calling Pickett an ‘ex-cage fighter’ and describing Guillard (or Johnson) as holding a KO title. It seems they thought they were getting pro-wrestling instead of MMA, which is a common mistake in the UK.
Overall I don’t think it was a huge success, but far from a failure, and quite promising for the future. If MMA can draw near-600k viewers with what is essentially a worst case scenario there is plenty of room for growth. And I believe that people new to MMA seeing the UFC’s glossy coverage will be much more likely to check the sport out in future than those who have stumbled upon BAMMA broadcasts in the past.
(Saying UFC shows usually get sub-100k figures is very generous. 20-30k is the norm, with UK events generally not peaking much higher.)
@Chang: thanks for the info.
@Adam: appreciate the great feedback. I agree that the 100K range was a bit broad. That is now updated.
@Adam Although it usually gets 20-30k it’s one of the highest rated shows on BT Sports which is impressive considering it airs at 3 o’clock and doesn’t take recordings into account. If BT promoted UFC more it would get better ratings
Decent numbers for Europe/UK MMA is much smaller in these markets Boxing and Football/ Soccer are still kings. UFC can do a few good shows a year there.
sorry but these numbers are horrendous. Failing to crack the top 30 on C5 and losing the timeslot battle is horrid. 500k is on par with the live BAMMA debut on C5, which was very shortly after cancelled for low ratings. Face it, like in the USA, the UFC has a small devoted fan base which creates good numbers on certain cable channels and PPV, but they don’t have the fan base big enough to get those truly impressive numbers. it’s annoying to see a lot of other articles trying to hype these numbers up as a success.