MMA Payout has learned from a Nielsen source that the second episode of The Ultimate Fighter 19 was down substantially from its debut last week. It registered just 320,000 viewers on Wednesday night.
The second episode of TUF featuring Team Edgar vs. Team Penn received the lowest overnight rating for the TUF franchise on FS1 (excluding TUF Nations). The previous low was Episode 9 of TUF 18.
The second episode was almost down 50% from its 2 hour premiere in the Adult 18-49 demo with a 0.23 and 0.32 in the Males 18-49.
TUF 19: Team Edgar vs. Team Penn
Episode 1: 595,000
Episode 2: 320,000
Payout Perspective:
This will be an interesting season to evaluate the overnight ratings versus DVR and ratings from reruns. Undoubtedly, 320,000 viewers is very low even if it went up against the NBA Playoffs (which ruled the cable ratings on Wednesday night).
all of these ratings are terrible….no way Fox renews Zuffa’s deal… Zuffa will be LUCKY if they don’t get dropped before the deal is up..
TUF is a documentary for hardcore mma fans… before it was an entertaining reality show that brought mainstream fans into mma and got them hooked..
In its infancy TUF had many good things going on for it; It build talent, it dealt with legitimate up & comers, it build a big fight between the coaches plus it was new & exciting. Today it is the complete opposite. The UFC clearly has no idea how to build talent or new stars to replace the old, it’s even planning three more TUF’s lol
What does TUF have to do with how they build talent? Outside the first TUF. The UFC has never used it to built talent. They have no problems creating talent and finding it. When they do they do not put them on TUF. Look at the talent they have had since TUF than didn’t go through TUF. Cain was a big prospect from a big gym that had all the names in the gym talking about him. He didn’t come out of no where. Yet why wasn’t he put on TUF? It wasn’t an accident. Why didn’t Jones go to TUF? Hendricks? Aldo? Just about all the stars in every divisions have not went through TUF. TUF is a reality show that due to the nature of being stuck in a house out of their comfort zone and random match ups, no game planning, with only a week notice. It has always been way to risky to put anyone of value or great potential on that show. You out guys with maybe a little potential or personality and hope they make a name for themselves. TUF is used to supply fighters to the UFC not stars. The names that come off end up hyping bigger names and stars. TUF still serves that purpose. The question is. Are the ratings enough to keep it going. At some point the guys are not getting enough eyes on them to have any value to the UFC when they come off the show. Then they cant even get over other fighters if no one saw then on TUF.
That said, I cant wait until TUF 20. Finally they are trying something fresh.
Ahahahahahaha! The sinking ship hits bottom soon!
Rousey-Carano will finish this joke off
@wqewqeqw not only will Fox want to renew the deal, it’ll be worth nearly double the amount. ESPN and NBC are also going to get in on the bidding. UFC is proping up FS1 and FS2. Fox wants more events in primetime. They didn’t pick up the international cards because they couldn’t accommodate the time slot. They have other deals that they need to respect. They probably wanted to see how mlb was going to do before they picked up more UFC events during the day. UFC is a big deal on the sports programming market and networks can’t wait for their deal with fox to expire to start negotiations. We might even see UFC split between 2 networks.
Rob, are you a network clown trying to sell Ad spots on UFC events lol That sounds like a memo for all the ad boys to use when pushing spots