UFC Fight Night 89 drew 964,000 viewers on FS1 Saturday night according to Sports TV Ratings. The overnight rating reflects a 22% increase from last month’s Memorial Day weekend Fight Night.
One should note that UFC Fight Night 89 was on a Saturday night. The last Fight Night held on a Saturday night was the converted UFC Fight Night 82 (which drew 1.3M viewers) held Super Bowl Weekend.
In the main event, Stephen Thompson defeated Rory MacDonald via unanimous decision. The main event ran over approximately 30 minutes from the estimated time. Also, the start of the main card was late due to US Open Golf.
| UFC Fight Night 2016 | ||||
| Main Card | Prelims | |||
| UFC Fight Night 81 | 2,288,000 | 1,767,000 | ||
| UFC Fight Night 82 | 1,300,000 | 1,093,000 | ||
| UFC Fight Night 83 | 983,000 | 829,000 | ||
| UFC Fight Night 85 | 1,149,000 | 766,000 | ||
| UFC Fight Night 86 | 781,000 | 443,000 | ||
| UFC Fight Night 87 | 656,000 | 494,000 | ||
| UFC Fight Night 88 | 757,000 | 469,000 | ||
| UFC Fight Night 89 | 964,000 | 369,000 | ||
The Prelims which aired on FS2 due to US Open Golf on FS1 drew 369,000 viewers and 145,000 in the adult 18-49 demo.
In addition, the post-fight show which aired from 1:35am-2:30am ET drew 306,000 and 165,000 in the adult 18-49 demo per Sports TV Ratings. The prefight show on FS2 drew 109,000 viewers and 42,000 in the adult 18-49 demo.
Payout Perspective:
Good ratings for a Saturday night with golf, boxing and baseball. Also, the prelims posted good ratings considering it was moved to FS1. Its notable that the night before WSOF and Bellator had disappointing ratings. Although popular among MMA fans, MacDonald-Thompson isn’t a main event the casual viewer would tune in for so we might assume that people are gravitating to the UFC brand just because it is UFC.
Looks like PBC won out the night on combat sports, but I sure wish PBC, Showtime Boxing, HBO Boxing, UFC, Bellator, and WSOF would not compete with each other……i know competition is competition but it really makes no sense to split the viewership like they do. One would think they would all come together and say “lets do whats best for our organizations…and competing with yours isnt so lets hash out some dates….”
PBC won the night because they were on free tv and the UFC was on cable. Even still the UFC actually did better in the 18-49 demo getting a 0.4 and PBC got a 0.3 at least in the overnights.
Listen I like boxing but read Dan Rafeal the numbers for PBC on NBC just keep getting lower and lower.
http://espn.go.com/blog/dan-rafael/post/_/id/16196/notes-premier-boxing-champions-on-nbc-sinks-to-all-time-low
Honestly I’ll be surprised if PBC lives past 2016. Boxing will live on and can and will still be great but time buys with not great matchups(sometimes there are) are a receipe for disaster.
Doesn’t matter JJ, UFC is a brand, PBC has high ratings when they actually have star power, this card didn’t have that. and UFC fans are far more “loyal” to the branch than boxing fans to a particular series or promotion. UFC fans will tune in just because it says ‘UFC’ on it.
Yeah, the brand where Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey do about 10 times the business that Mighty Mouse brings in, the UFC fans will just watch anything.
This was the lowest rated sports event on prime time network TV in many years. You can’t spin that as a positive.
It seems Al Haymons new plan, is to put PBC out of business, screw the investment company and take 10% of everybody he advises purse and paying them much more than they usually get, then telling all his fighters to sign with Mayweather promotions with Richard Schaefer and just repeat what they were doing at Golden Boy.
They will be almost exclusive to Showtime and maybe CBS.