Bellator 133 held last Friday night drew an average viewership of 565,000 on Spike TV which is considerably down from January’s Bellator 132. Its adjusted viewership (Live +3) increased to 606,000 viewers.
The event peaked at 967,000 viewers. In the main event, Alexander Shlemenko used a spinning backfist to KO Melvin Manhoef in the second round.
Payout Perspective:
In terms of competition, the NBA All Star Events may have drawn some viewers away although it seems like the demo watching those festivities would not watch Bellator. The NBA Celebrity Game on ESPN at 7:00pm drew 1.78 million viewers while the Rising Stars game on TNT held at 9:00pm drew 1.55 million viewers per Television By Numbers. In terms of winning the night in cable ratings “Gold Rush” (4.6 million) followed by “Alaskan Bush People” (3.8 million) on the Discovery Channel were 1-2 in the cable ratings.
Yikes. That is not good. I thought part of the reason for the reduction in shows was to make each bigger and provide stronger promotion. With the decrease comes a loss of ad revenue, these shows should not be doing less than those in the old season format.
The next one should do pretty good, even with Lima out of the line-up.