MMA Payout has learned that the DVR +3 rating for Bellator MMA 111 on Friday received an adjusted average viewership of 718,000 viewers. Also, its peak occurred during the main event at 10:48 pm when viewership grew to 964,000 viewers.
The DVR plus 3 rating accounts for those Nielsen homes that did not watch the event live but recorded it and watched it within 3 days of the event. This is one of the acceptable ways to measure programming by advertisers and networks.
Bellator MMA 110 – Overnight: 880K; DVR +3: 1 million
Bellator MMA 111 – Overnight: 653K; DVR +3: 718K
Payout Perspective:
The DVR bump gives Bellator MMA 111 about a 10% bump in the ratings. The overall overnight rating is 766,500 and a DVR +3 average of 859,000. The peak ratings for this telecast was near 1 million viewers which is still something that Bellator is distinctly proud of. Bellator 110’s peak was 1.3 million viewers per Nielsen sources.
Close to a million viewer peak again last week on @SpikeTV when @DuduDantasMMA was pulling off that INSANE sub.
— Bjorn Rebney (@BjornRebney) March 12, 2014
Good combo spike and bellator….soon it will rival the UFC
to Bjorn Rebney: why didn’t you give the guy that knocked out Dantas in Brazil a chance for a rematch in Bellator . i know it was an American fighter not too many people heard of in maybe an unsanctioned event.
Tops,
It would be interesting to see a comparison of overall eyes-on for TV viewership between the UFC and Bellator. Even setting aside PPVs and Fight Pass, I’m not sure that Bellator is closing the distance.
Bellator can’t seem to break the 1M mark for average viewership, but it runs a lot of shows, so I suppose you can argue that it makes up in volume what it lacks in quality.
Of course, the UFC is running a lot of shows on TV as well (not counting PPVs and Fight Pass), and it’s UFC on Fox shows are still the big dog of network TV.
Bellator has been on Spike for a while now and doesn’t seem to be growing viewership further, but if they’ve reached a profitable steady state then that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Remember so far Bellator is 100% free and on tv. What kind of numbers do you think the UFC would do if they stopped doing ppv and just did TV. Their numbers would triple Bellator. Time will tell
Agreed, it’s not an apples to apples comparison, but it’s a comparison that could be done. Otherwise you’re trying to translate PPV numbers into what they could get on free TV which is tough to do.
@Diego As you say, its hard to do a straight comparison at this point. I think the UFC has made itself synonymous with MMA (when non-hardcore fans think the sport of MMA they think UFC not Bellator) and while Bellator is making strides it will take time before we can justifiably make side by side comparisons. As far as growing an audience, I think time will tell. BMMA’s PPV should shed some light on whether or not fans are catching on to the organization.
We also need to remember that we never see DVR +3 for the UFC. You honestly can only look at the live numbers if you are comparing Bellator and UFC ratings.
Bellator is the only MMA ratings I car recall in which the DVR numbers have been reported and hyped.