The main card of UFC Fight Night 77 Saturday night on FS1 drew an average viewership of 757,000 viewers. The prelims drew an average viewership of 609,000 on FS1 per Sports TV Ratings.
The main card which aired from 10pm-12:56pm ET on Saturday night featured the third fight between Dan Henderson and Vitor Belfort. The prelims which preceded the main card from 8:00-10-00pm ET on FS1 drew an average viewership of 609,000. Also of note ratings-wise is that the pre-fight show (7:16pm due to college football to 8pm ET) drew an average of 217,000 viewers on FS1.
| UFC Fight Nights 2015 | ||
| Main Card | Prelims | |
| UFC Fight Night 59 | 2,751,000 | 908,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 60 | 913,000 | 775,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 61 | 1,200,000 | 813,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 62 | 617,000 | 280,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 63 | 389,000 | 304,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 66 | 575,000 | 286,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 67 | 813,000 | 713,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 68 | 950,000 | 782,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 70 (prelims FS2) | 909,000 | 223,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 71 | 801,000 | 543,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 72 | 508,000 | 292,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 73 | 1,159,000 | 306,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 74 | 796,000 | 542,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 75 | 841,000 | 270,000 |
| UFC Fight Night 77 | 757,000 | 609,000 |
The ESPN college football game between Michigan State and Nebraska from 7-10pm ET won the night in cable sports with 3.4 million viewers per Sports TV Ratings. In addition, the big SEC matchup betwen LSU and Alabama on CBS drew 11.1 million viewers in prime time.
Payout Perspective:
The ratings reflect that Bellator’s quarterly “tentpole” event had the slight edge over the UFC this weekend as Friday’s event on SpikeTV drew 814,000 viewers. UFC Fight Night faced stiff competition with college football prevailing. In addition, HBO Boxing which featured Timothy Bradley taking on Brandon Rios drew 910,000 viewers Saturday night.
So now Bellator is drawing better than the UFC, and on a friday at that. To add insult to injury, they got beat on Saturday by Timothy Bradley–someone who draws very poorly in boxing, and on a premium channel at that. Looks like the UFC event was the bottom of the barrel event in combat sports this weekend. Just shows its inevitable gradual decline, these days casuals only talk Rousey, Connor, the rest? who cares…
It is amazing how misinformed some are on this topic. The channel these fights come on has a major impact on their ratings. MMA’S popularity continues to grow while clearly boxing ‘ s are drastically declining.
Btw the Bradley vs Rios fight was on HBO a paid premium channel you have to pay for dumb ass, and it still had the higher ratings as if it was on basic cable it would of doubled or tripped that.