Low ratings for UFC on FOX 3: 2.4 million viewers
Posted on May 8, 2012, 04:00 PM by Mike SearsonUFC on Fox 3 was one of the best cards of the year and the best UFC event hosted on FOX thus far. According to UFC President, Dana White and quoted by my colleauge, Mike Drahota on Lowkick.com: 10,788 fans witnessed the event in person for a live gate of $1.1 million. Despite this, the Cinco de Mayo Event had relatively poor TV ratings.
Fight fans were treated to Nate Diaz winning submission of the night in his victory over Jim Miller and none could forget the spectacular undercard with Johny Hendricks, Alan Belcher and Lavar Johnson. However, television viewership painted quite a different picture. According to tvsportsratings.com
UFC on FOX 3: 1.6 Men 18-34 (-50% vs. UFC on FOX 2) and 2.4 mil viewers (-48%)
— TVsportsratings (@tvsportsratings)May 7, 2012
Those numbers represent a sharp decline from Fox's previous UFC events. The debut garnered some 5.7 million viewers in November 2011, and 4.7 million viewers for the second event in January. Some of the blame may be to having the card up against the Mayweather vs. Cotto boxing match and the NBA playoffs. A relatively warm Saturday night in most of the United States may have played a role addittionally for low ratings.
UFC on FOX 4 is scheduled for August 4, 2012 at Los Angeles' Staples Center. It will be interesting to see if viewership picks up based on the excellent card that was put together for UFC on FOX 3.
Comments
2.4 million tuning in to MMA is great. Maybe not as good as some other events but to make out it is dismal is unwarranted sensationalism.
Wrong.
It is the lowest network MMA card, ever. Beaten by every single Elitexc card on CBS.
2.4 mil is a lot i cant even get 100 views on my youtube!
those 2.4 will definetly be watching again, awesome card, and they will tell three friends, and they will tell three friends...ratings will skyrocket.
Honestly it was because of the names...great fights and match ups don't get me wrong. But outside hardcore MMA fans the names didn't attract. This isn't going to slow the sport down.
the problem was that 6.724 billion people hate Josh Koschek
Great for MMA...but a 50% decline? I think it was low, especially in proportion to the quality of the fights.
There's something to be said about going toe to toe with other big events (like the Mayweather fight). However, the first Fox card went agaisnt a Pacquiao fight, and football.
I think this biggest factor here is the lack of star power. It was a good exciting card, but it lacked big name fighters.
I remember years ago when the UFC were only running 12 promotions a year. You'd be hanging out for the next fights and wouldn;t want to miss it.
Now adays, we have the Ultimate fighter, fight for the troops, fight night, Fox, and all the numbered PPV like UFC 146, 147 etc
The number of fights has really increased to keep up with the global expansion of the sport and i think this is why it was so necessary for newer weight classes to be added to create more talent.
UFC still has to compete with boxing like big floyd maywether fights, and all the other mma events.
I think because casual fans are so spoilt with UFC fights, they are happy to tune out to other entertainment when other big events coincide.
This sport however is only getter bigger and I think the true fans are the ones making up the numbers. Casual fans will always come and go.
That fight of the night on the undercard was awesome.
It reminded me of the Stefan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin fight, crazy banging and crazy hair.
all to blame on the AVENGERS movie
That I will agree with. Avengers pulled 200Million dollars on the 2 opening days.
I know I TiVo'd the fights. Avengers kicked ass!!
Those are some good points Evan. It might be a little bias on my part as I do heavy coverage of the Amateur MMA fights in Reno/Tahoe/NorCal for another media outlet and I am not as influenced by seeing "Big Names" on a card. I just like to watch good fights and good fighters.
I watched these fights at home and when they were done went to a local casino for dinner. every TV in the casino had the boxing on and they were mobbed. Conco de Mayo and a Mexican fighterwas packing them in!
I guess the 20 million who streamed the event dont count 8))
That true? Where you get that E?
I was just messing around kinda. No one knows how many outside the US streamed it to see it. I bet its a huge number.
Entity, there's a lot they don't account for. Take PPV...I usually watch in a bar with my local fight team and there's easily 600 people in that bar for UFC. When they run it in a Casino or at the sportsbook, there's thousands! Unfortunately, they rely on Nielsen ratings for these things and from what I've heard in the past the people who "rate" for Nielsen's often watch other things but put on airs and tell the pollsters they only watch PBS or the Learning Channel, etc to sound more educated/PC.
I agree totally. Their numbers will never be totally accurate. Might have been 3-7 people in every house that saw Fox...we'll never know.
FOX has to take the blame for low viewership (lower anyways). The 2 previous UFC on FOX events were awful. Not the matchups themselves, but the way they were presented. Especially the Velasquez vs. Dos Santos debacle. And no the fight wasn't a debacle, advertising the event and only showing crappy build up and one fight, sucks for a broadcast debut for UFC. UFC on FOX 2 stepped up the quantity of fights, but the quality was suspect. There was only 1 fight on that card I wanted to see, and I'm certain the uninitiated didn't have a bid name to watch on that card either. No, Evens is not, and will not be a draw outside of those who already know who he is, or people who are already MMA fans. For a guy that talks a big game, he's got as much charisma as a wet grocery sack. If the UFC is going to continue to try to work mainstream TV, and to get larger crowds on it, they're going to have to throw the masses a bone and schedule a title fight (and not an hour build up with only one fight on air) or they need to find a TV friendly face to advertise around and build interest in (throw Faber in there, though I think he's overrated). Just my opinion, and don't get me wrong, UFC on FOX 3 had great fights. I especially enjoyed the Diaz/Miller fight, even though I think the Diaz boys are punks, Nate put on a hell of an exhibition.
They need to put a title fight on FOX or huge names. then on the main card put some decent fighters that may not have a huge name to the outside. This will draw numbers in to watch the main event and get people excited. People will then realise that MMA is the best sport ever and people will be drawn to watch other people fight not just the huge name. There are amazing fighters in the UFC but people dont like to watch them unless they know who they are. Lets get them to realise that thats not the case. Draw the numbers in FOX!!
Its no surprise that the highest viewer rating came from the show that had the largest names on it. Casual followers probably couldn't have banned any of the fighters besides Kos from fox 3.
I would say the major amount of commercials and ads in between the rounds and fights lost people, you need to keep fight fans pumped about the fights, especially new fans to the sport.Over 90% of the commercials and ads have nothing to do with the fight game. They need to add more in your face/extreame footage of upcoming fights and media events ....not a maxi-pad commmercial. Any Hoe , Thats my 2 cents.