Glory Kickboxing 23 on Friday night drew 295,000 viewers per Sports TV Ratings. Although it represents an almost 50% increase from June’s Glory 22, it still is low compared to previous events.
The event aired on Spike TV from 11:00pm to 1:04am on Friday night.
| Glory Ratings on Spike | |
| Glory 11 | 381,000 |
| Glory 12 | 476,000 |
| Glory 13 | 659,000 |
| Glory 14 | 495,000 |
| Glory 15 | 354,000 |
| Glory 16 | 498,000 |
| Glory 17 | 487,000 |
| Glory 18 | 352,000 |
| Glory 19 | 542,000 |
| Glory 20 | 359,000 |
| Glory 21 | 488,000 |
| Glory 22 | 152,000 |
| Glory 23 | 295,000 |
Prior to the last two events, Glory events on Spike averaged 463,00 viewers. It now averages 426,000. The last two events on Spike TV have been the two lowest ratings on Spike TV.
Payout Perspective:
Glory 22 (from France) in June aired the same night as a World Series of Fighting event which may account for June’s low rating. Still, the event was considerably lower than usual. Friday’s event featured a middleweight tournament. But, the 11pm start time might have contributed to the low ratings. Perhaps the combo event in September with Bellator will help the sport as kickboxing has failed find a steady foothold in the U.S.
G22 aired during the day, live from France, and Spike didn’t bother repeating it later that night. No real point comparing those to anything.
These numbers for G23 are pretty bad, no excuses.
Glory is trying to pick up the pieces from K1 wreckage and at the same time is trying to single-handedly develop the US market. Not an easy task. Give it time. It is a beautiful combat sport.
I didn’t even know it was on. It’s tough to track all the events. I can follow the schedule for Boxing and MMA on ESPN, but I don’t have a way to track kickboxing, and I don’t watch Spike very often (unless Bellator or PBC is on) so I don’t see the ads. I think a lot of content is getting lost this way. Too much going on to keep track of. Which is actually a nice problem to have.
Bad numbers for a network like SPike. We dont know what they pay Glory, its probably not much but even the late start time they should be doing more than that.
Thats numbers you would expect on NBC Sports not Spike.
This is why Viacom is doing Bellator/Glory show, they want to give Glory a push and have mma fans see the fights and maybe become fans of Glory.
Just dont know if there is ever gonna be a big market for kickboxing in US.