The season finale of season 26 of The Ultimate Fighter drew 220,000 viewers on FS1 Wednesday night. It’s one of the lowest (if not the lowest) live + SD rating for the TUF franchise.
According to ShowBuzz Daily, it drew 0.09 in the A18-49 demo.
In the last fight of the season to determine who will fight in the live Finale on Friday night Sijara Eubanks defeated Roxanne Modafferi to earn her right to the TUF Finale. It would have meant two of the lowest seeds (Nicco Montano is the other finalist) in the house squaring off for the inaugural Flyweight title. However, due to weight cutting issues, Eubanks was forced to pull out and Modafferi was inserted into the final slot.
Payout Perspective:
Wednesday night’s show was not in the usual 10pm ET time slot as the replay of episode 11 aired and the new episode aired in the 11pm ET slot. The ratings for this season were quite low with an average of 237,000 viewers for live viewership and the lowest rating ever for a first-run episode of TUF. The fall TUF season is a hard sell due to Major League Baseball’s postseason as the show takes a week or so off due to conflicts and/or the World Series. DVR ratings have helped bolster the viewership by almost 40 to 50% of the live viewing each week.
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