The UFC 200 Prelims on FS1 drew one of its top ratings for the prelims on the network with 1.786M viewers Saturday night per Sports TV Ratings. The ratings drew well despite starting off on FS2 due to baseball.
The Prelims on FS1 aired from 5:31pm to 7:00pm PT due to the MLB game preceding it going to extra innings. The Prelims start on FS2 airing from 5:00pm to 5:32pm PT drew 582,000 viewers and 379,000 in the Adult 18-49 demo. The ratings made it the most-watched telecast in FS2 history in both metrics per Nielsen.
When on FS1, the Prelims drew 1.084 million viewers in the adult 18-49 demo making it the most-watched UFC Prelims telecast in this demo. The show peaked with 2,046,000 viewers in the last quarter hour (6:45pm-7:00pm PT)
The 200 Prelims comes in third in terms of all-time highest-rated prelims on FS1. UFC 196 in March drew 1.843 million viewers and UFC 194 drew 1.931M viewers in December 2015.
The UFC 200 Prelims were highlighted by Juliana Pena defeating Cat Zingano in the last fight of the televised prelims.
In addition, the UFC Post-Fight Show on FS1 drew 244,000 viewers and 142,000 viewers in adult 18-49 demo. The UFC Pre-Fight Show which was switched to FS2 drew 99,000 viewers.
Payout Perspective:
The big ratings for the prelim card is one of the indicators that many look at when guessing the buy rate. We note that the two other UFC Prelims scoring over 1.7M viewers featured Conor McGregor in the PPV main event. Both of those events drew over 1 million PPV buys. The viewership in the adult 18-49 demo should please the UFC’s new owners as it set a record on FS1 and FS2 in terms of viewership.
Good numbers. But if you consider all the hype and all the money they wasted on promoting the event, the numbers are almost underwhelming.
Not to mention that many people are becoming more and more suspicious of the so-called anti-doping policies that seem to have no effect on the big cashable names in the sport until they become expendable and they need to be gotten rid of.
The only people that are suspicious are nut jobs like yourself who desperately want to see the UFC fail.
It’s like are you people serious? Yes they needed to get rid of Jon Jones you know so what better way than 72 hours before a card that “not impressed” just said that they spent all this hype and money on.
And these guys are so “expendable and had to be gotten rid of” that in a couple of years when they come back they’re still gonna be fighting for the UFC.
Who was expendable? They coped fine with Anderson Silva & Nick Diaz being out, under USADA, only a few guys have been caught in the top 10 – Jones who is 28 and was just recently voted greatest UFC fighter of all time, Mended & Romero, who got his suspension reduced because his supplement wasn’t labeled right and you can’t blame a fighter for using a supplement that isn’t banned but has unmarked substances in it.
More than a quarter of the card was on FS2 in half the amount of homes, obviously ratings would be down.
Who was expendable? They coped fine with Anderson Silva & Nick Diaz being out, under USADA, only a few guys have been caught in the top 10 – Jones who is 28 and was just recently voted greatest UFC fighter of all time, Mended & Romero, who got his suspension reduced because his supplement wasn’t labeled right and you can’t blame a fighter for using a supplement that isn’t banned but has unmarked substances in it.
More than a quarter of the card was on FS2 in half the amount of homes, obviously ratings would be down.
Apparently, UFC fanboys are unable to do some critical thinking (or any kind of thinking) and put 2 and 2 together. It’s okay to have suspicions, especially after the whole Belfort incident that was swept under the rug.
Jones’ last fight sold just 300k PPVs. It was a failure by the UFC’s standards. His fight with Cormier didn’t draw too much attention either. Then Brock comes to the rescue and somehow manages to pass every anti-doping test even though he is a neon sign saying “Look at me, I’m made of PEDs”. Jones fails a drug test, is replaced with a more cashable fighter (Silva), past his prime and willing to work for peanuts (unlike Jones). Then the UFC is sold. Do I notice something here?
Good numbers, period. especially for prelims. Those numbers are better than many of the regular UFC fight nights.
Friday night-number 2 show on Cable tv and number 1 sporting event.
Saturday night-number 1 overall on Cable tv
Saturday night- did over 1 million buys and 10 million at the gate
No Rousey or Conor btw.
I think whatever money they spent was worth it no matter how you look at it. Fox and ESPN sure was paying attention and this will just add to their tv rights demand in two years. Speaking of which, with WME at the front people inside the tv industry and mma industry projecting UFC will receive no less than $300 million per year on the next deal.
It was number one because there was nothing else to watch on TV. It’s easy to be number one when there’s no competition.
PBC on CBS drew 2,12 million viewers in June with almost no publicity. The fact of the matter is that the UFC would end up like the WSOF if it didn’t have an army of fanboys eager to buy whatever crap the UFC throws out.
UFC 200 drew less than 20,000 fanboys at the arena and the PPV buys have yet to be disclosed.1,7 million viewers during an event featuring big names like Silva, Cormier and Lesnar is a rather underwhelming number given all the hype and promotional gimmicks.
It was a mediocre event if you compare it to the UFC’s previous fight nights. The downtrend is there. If big names like Lesnar and Silva give the UFC its third best event in terms of views, it’s pretty obvious many people lost their interest.
Just to put things into perspective, Klitch v Tyson drew almost 20 million viewers only in Germany. The fight was nowhere near as hyped up as the UFC’s main events.
Pac v May resulted in over 4 million PPV buys. The fight was moderately promoted.
Rizin’s first event drew about 4,5 million viewers worldwide with little to no publicity whatsoever.
Very nice.
And these are prelims.
Are other combat sports’ preliminaries this popular that we see them televised?
PBC on CBS peaked at 3.94m viewers.
Most watched fight in all of combat sports since PBC on NBC peaked at 4.56m last year.
The UFC is on a weird road. I think they sold because they knew if they were ever going to sell, it would have to be now.
I just feel like its really going to go down hill from here.
People are failing drug tests, named stars are losing left and right, cards are getting very boring.
I think maybe mma ran its course.
I see boxing is doing very well again.
UFC needs some tuning at the moment.
Even with the pull out of Jones, this still likely hit a very big number, well over 1m buys.