MMA Payout has learned from a Nielsen source that the UFC 191 Prelims drew 663,000 viewers on FS1 Saturday night. The Prelim card featured Ross Pearson taking on Paul Felder with Pearson getting the win.
The Prelims aired from 8-10pm ET prior to the UFC 191 PPV. The peak audience occurred from 9:30-9:45pm with 807,000 total viewers according to a Nielsen source. Notably the FS1 prefight show drew 291,000 viewers at 7pm ET.
The Postfight Show on FS2 drew 42,000 viewers at 1:00am ETand the re-air on FS1 at 2:30am ET drew 155,000 viewers.
The weigh-ins on FS2 Friday drew 54,000 viewers.
In comparison, UFC 190 peaked at almost 1.6M viewers. The Prefight show drew 518,000 viewers and the Postfight show drew 438,000 viewers. Of course, it had the luxury of being on FS1, not FS2.
Payout Perspective:
This past Saturday’s prelims reflects a 53% decrease from August’s PPV Prelims. The UFC 191 Prelim rating probably reflects the amount of interest that the PPV had on Saturday. Unlike the UFC 189 Prelims which appear to be an anomaly, the prelims this time seem to be in line with what most expect out of the PPV buy rate – a low number.
Mighty Mouse: “Here I come to wreck the ratings!”
Dave Meltzer retweeted:
“Per sources: MGM canceled all their closed circuit viewing parties for the Mayweather fight this weekend.”
The news just keeps getting worse and worse. This is going to bomb. HAHAHAHA!
I agree, the poor ratings are a reflection of the disinterest of a card headlined by Demetrious Johnson–It’s to be expected by this point. What is interesting to me is why the hell they keep putting him on PPV and making him the face of the event, this event will be lucky to pull 100k-150k buys, can the UFC even break even on that? is there something on the contracts that state that a championship fight MUST be on PPV? how come they don’t place him on other more popular cards as a Co-Main event or maybe on free TV?
I fail to see the reasoning of a Demetrious Johnson headlining PPV card, the prelim ratings are poor and the PPV buys are abysmal… I understand he is a technical guy and a prodigy but for the casual fan his style is boring and decisions are plenty, lots of people were leaving the place half-way through the main event, it was embarrassing.
Also, on the boxing front… I would have thought that Mayweather would have made his “final” fight a more exciting affair or even a reasonable sell (but so far it looks tame as f***), as soon as he announced Berto as the opponent ALL interest has been gradually decreasing, now to the point that tickets are not even sold out which is a first for a Mayweather event. There were some crazy estimates being thrown out there of 1.6M buys, by this point if this thing gets HALF of that I would call it a success. Now Cotto-Canelo, that fight will be f***ing HUGE and I am looking forward to it.
Why is this a boxing thread for a poop ufc show??? bahahahahaha oh yea thats all the UFC girls have, they cant stand on a pile of shit to defend the downward spiral of mma!! oh wait Rousey will be fighting soon
Why do boxing trolls relentlessly troll on mma websites? Oh yeah, because they love the homosexual lifestyle that comes with boxing and are threatened by the inevitable take over of mma.
That’s just it though Logical, that fight won’t get half of that. They’d be lucky to get 500-600k buys. No one is buying this turdburger.
Cotto-Canelo is going to be huge? It might hit a million buys, I’m not sure it does any more than that.
@ Jason Cruz
You think PPV cracked 100,000 buys?