MMA Payout has learned from a Nielsen source that Saturday night’s UFC Fight Night 57’s main card drew an average of 903,000 viewers. In addition, the prelims had a considerable jump to 777,000 viewers.
The main card featured a Frankie Edgar-Cub Swanson feature with Edgar getting the submission in the 5th round. The event peaked with 1,021,000 viewers. It was the most watched show on FS1 on Saturday. In the adult 18-49 demo, there was an increase of 16% from UFC Fight Night 56 with 582,000 (vs. 503,000 for FN 56) average viewers in this segment.
Preceding the main card, the Prelims drew 777,000 viewers which is way above the FS1 Fight Night Prelim average since the launch (468,000). In the adult 18-49 demo, it drew an average of 445,000 viewers.
Saturday night’s fights were well received as shown through the FOX Sports Live postfight coverage which drew an average of 446,000 viewers for the first 30 minutes after the fights. This reflects a 137% jump from that show’s normal average. Notably, there was an overrun of 15 minutes from the fights but still people kept the network on (perhaps hoping to see Paige Van Zant).
Payout Perspective:
The UFC Fight Night main card average for 2014 is at 799,000. Although Frankie Edgar is not a PPV draw, he did well on Saturday night as it appears that the main event did well and it transitioned over to the postfight programming. The ratings for the prelims were a big surprise as it appears a lot of people tuned in. The event did compete with the Pacquiao fight for those that decided to purchase the PPV.
Yawn
tops with a pile of shit comment
Why is no one complaining about the show ending at 1:15 am?!? With all the commercials and analyzes, it is horrible watching UFC on Fox. I got you have to pay for it with commercials, but just watch an event on Spike and it doesn’t feel like it is a whole lot of down time.
I think one big reason for the larger than average turnout is that most of these fights were actually relevant. Speaking for myself, I watched hoping to see Cub Swanson win so that he could be next to challenge Jose Aldo. The rest of the main card was quite compelling as well, with Green/Barboza being a huge fight in the lightweight division, and the return of Matt Wiman.