Bellator MMA on CBS Saturday night drew 1.068M viewers per Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily. It drew 237,000 viewers in the A18-49 demo and a 0.67 HH rating.
The debut for the promotion on the network featured the retirement of Fedor as he faced Ryan Bader. The Bellator Heavyweight Champion made easy work of the legend with a first round stoppage.
In addition, Johnny Eblen successfully defended his middleweight title with a unanimous decision victory over Anatoly Tokov. Also, Brennan Ward stopped Sabah Homasi with a second round TKO.
The ratings are not as huge as the old Strikeforce ratings on CBS but that was another era. It did do better than Fox on Saturday night which aired NASCAR from the LA Coliseum but was less than ABC’s Saturday night NBA game of Warriors-Mavericks.
Payout Perspective:
Not huge ratings but considering the competition on a Saturday night it was a good start. Obviously, the hope for the promotion is that they can do quarterly shows on the network similar to the UFC on Fox. Those telecasts did much better numbers so we will see how Bellator structures its fights to ensure its top fighters are featured on prime network telecasts.
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