Television By Numbers reports that the overnight ratings for UFC on Fox 11 received 1.99 million viewers for a 0.8 rating and 3 share for Saturday night. It was the lowest rating for a UFC network show and was last in terms of average viewers in its time slot among network shows.
UFC on FOX Ratings:
UFC on FOX 1: 5.70M viewers (3.1 rating)
UFC on FOX 2: 4.70M viewers (2.6 rating)
UFC on FOX 3: 2.42M viewers (1.5 rating)
UFC on FOX 4: 2.44M viewers (1.4 rating)
UFC on FOX 5: 4.40M viewers (2.5 rating)
UFC on FOX 6: 4.22M viewers (2.4 rating)
UFC on FOX 7: 3.70M viewers (2.2 rating)
UFC on FOX 8: 2.38M viewers (1.5 rating)
UFC on FOX 9: 2.80M viewers (1.8 rating)
UFC on FOX 10: 3.22M viewers (1.9 rating)
UFC on FOX 11: 1.99M viewer (0.8 rating)
Average UFC on FOX Viewership: 3.45M viewers.
Payout Perspective:
The ratings are disappointing considering the card and the fact that the event was a sell out in Orlando. Winning the time slot for network television was the annual Easter tradition of ABC showing of “The Ten Commandments.” The movie scored 5.87 million viewers and 1.0 rating among adults 18-49 with a 4 share. In terms of overall viewership, UFC on Fox 11 lost out to a rerun of Mike and Molly on CBS which received 2.20 million average viewers.
The numbers do not account for the overrun which was about 20 minutes but the first look at the ratings is definitely not what people expected. It could be that the UFC is running too many shows together that viewers are either picking or choosing what to watch or just inundated with the amount of shows that they cannot keep track. Yesterday’s network show was very entertaining yet was the lowest rated UFC show on Fox so far. MMA Payout will keep you posted of adjusted ratings as they become available.
Can we stop talking about the growth of MMA and the UFC yet? How much more bad news do we need before we can make that conclusion?
FOX network TV ratings for the UFC are now below UFC on Spike ratings and close to being less than UFC on FX ratings. Congratulations.
Non-title fight with no-names (to the casual viewer). Probably would’ve done better numbers with Tate-Carmouche headlining.
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
The ship continues to sink but Captain Hook has glass eyes and a deaf crew
Apparently Fox are considering dropping UFC from their schedule. Can anyone confirm this?
This is what happens when you sell your ass to network douchbags that don’t know the fight game! Dana with all his faults knows MMA and unfortunately due to financial hardships signed a crap deal that is being run by people who are inept to MMA. They will run the UFC into the ground at this rate.
PPV numbers are down….TUF numbers are waaay down and now the FOX numbers suck too…
Wow. Very disappointing. I truly anticipated much higher rating for the card headlined with a meaningful heavyweight fight, Meisha, and Cerrone. I was wrong. Hard to argue that the overall popularity of the UFC seems to have plateaued. BTW like the graphs.
Went from fastest growing to fastest declining.
The ex-WWE fans probably went back to WWE or moved on.
The ratings of this show aren’t necessarily indicative of any kind of decline (although I do feel they are likely to start sliding bad soon if they don’t find a ‘next big thing,’ that has more to do with the simultaneous loss of Georges St. Pierre and Anderson Silva — two of their biggest ratings draws). It was a throwaway show featuring like 4 names of any note out of 30 odd fighters, made just to give them some sort of TV presence. UFC on Fox, and Fight Nights, used to be pretty big deals, and now they are just ‘that thing that’s on occasionally.’ Obviously the ratings are going to reflect this, but the whole thing is going to be cumulative over all their events. It’s not that simple.
You aren’t going to get actual statistics on their decline until you hit late spring and summer, which is where UFCs biggest events tend to happen. They are trying to stack Weidman/Machida in particular, so I’d watch those numbers for a more definitive answer.
Supposedly the UFC was going to become this huge thing once it got on Network TV. Supposedly it was going to be pulling in at least 3 million viewers on FX. The biggest mistake the UFC made was leaving Spike and thinking “If we are pulling these type of numbers on SpikeTV imagine what we would do on network TV and on FX”. Fair thinking but the reality is that the UFC is a niche sport & will never be mainstream or respected as such, it was clearly suited for a network like Spike who was more than happy to do everything the UFC wanted.
It amazes me how some casual fans still think the UFC is on Spike, absolutely insane since that hasn’t been the case since Dec. 2011. Weirdly enough most of those fans happen to be pro-wrestling fans and it also coincides with the fact that Lesnar’s last fight in the UFC was also in Dec. 2011.
@assassin: Thanks! Only took several years to step into the late 1990s with the graphs. 🙂
The glut of cards can’t be helping. There’s building momentum and then there’s over-saturating. Between Bellator every Friday and the UFC once a week or more it gets hard to catch all the action. Next week’s PPV will be telling.
Nobody wants to see this crap anymore. NOBODY
I think UFC 173 will be telling. It is such a weak card and it is being held in Las Vegas I’m assuming to try to prop up the gate. UFC 172 at least has 2 interesting fights and is the first time in Baltimore.
Ronda has been bad for UFC. She sucks up the mainstream media attention and severely hurts UFC’s ability to create new stars.
I don’t blame her. It’s good for her and her business.
It’s kinda like Danica Patrick. Danica got tons of press — yet IndyCar declined at the same time. Then Danica moved to Nascar — and Nascar ratings declined.
Same phenomenon — the pretty girl sucks up the mainstream media attention and the sports loses the ability to market and create new stars.
Random Dude,
Wanna see a weak card? Look at what they have booked for 174. I really thought the UFC would be the #2 sport in the USA right now (behind football) after what I experienced at UFC 100. Where did it all go so wrong?
172 173 and 174 are weak diluted cards…
UFC was a fad. It’s now cooled off. It will cycle up again eventually. Same thing happened to WWE in the 90s. Same thing happened to Nascar.
NBA is on the downswing now that the LeBron fad has peaked and is fading (NBA TV ratings were down 20% this year).
UFC isn’t going away. It’s a niche sport.
Fox deal was genius. Right as UFC started going downhill they signed the Fox deal to stabilize and let them survive the downturn.
Fads happen. American Idol was huge for a decade and now the ratings are a fraction of what they once were. People get bored,, want something new.
Fox deal was key, long term revenue, long term TV presence, let’s UFC survive and wait for the next boom.
Next boom? Ahahahahahahaha
Not happening as Bald Clown wants to sell this farce soon!
Kickboxing was just like MMA. Except they had their shows on \Showtime and HBO. it was being called more” complete” then boxing, because you can kick. It was going to overtake boxing etc. The issues with MMA is in reality, its full contact wrestling, wrestling is boring to watch. I was a high school wrestler and if you don’t understand the moves and escapes, yes it is boring. Boxing is much more exciting and pleasing to watch and very technical, an average person can see a nice punch and watch the affect of it. Also the physical battering a boxer can withstand is much more than and mma fighter can endure. That is why they wrestle, its safer on the ground, most mma fighters are wrestlers, not boxers, wrestlers are not trained to take beatings or have their chins tested to see what they can take. Watching an mma guy box is like watching a boxer wrestle, just doesn’t look right. I say just stick with your science, mixing them up looks like a mess.