UFC earns #2 spot in overall cable TV ratings saturday night
The UFC 259 main card hosted three title figths including a prominent champion vs champion bout featuring Jan Blachowicz, the UFC Light-Heavyweight champion taking on challenger Israel Adesanya, the UFC middleweight champion. It has since has been reported by Sports Business Journal that the main card even garnered a staggering 800,000 PPV buys tying GSP vs. Shields at UFC129 for 29th highest selling UFC PPV event in the companies history. While the main card certainly didn’t disappoint, it was after all a PPV event, a benefit the prelims have is being shown on free cable television.
What ended up being the real kicker of the night was the prelims headlined by former bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz who took on surging contender Casey Kenney. The two hour prelim garnered an average 1.208 million viewers with a significant portion, 541,000, coming after the extended college game on ESPNs network. Overall this put the UFC 259 prelims in the #2 spot for cable television on Saturday night, sitting only behind college basketball at 6:00pm est with a whopping 1.871 million average viewership during the Duke vs. North Carolina contest on ESPN.
This is a huge step up in ratings as the UFC 258 prelims drew just 794,000 viewers, compared to the previous 257 prelims where the main card was headlined by Dustin Poirier and none other than Conor McGregor, the holder of the top 5 selling PPV events in UFC history. The event ended up capturing 1.433 million viewers during the broadcast.
The early prelims that ran against the #1 cable spot finished #21 overall with a modest 447,000 viewers, if theoretically were adding this to PPV rankings, while obviously it was a free event, the prelims would be slotted at #8 all time between McGregor vs Aldo and McGregor vs Alvarez, while the early prelims would sit modestly in the top half of the Tapology rankings.
This seems to be all done within the coveted 18-49 demographic earning a .46 rating. Compared to the previous event where they scored .26 rating in the same demographic, it seems to be responsible for the drive in total viewership. UFC 257 prelims scored a .54 in the same demographic.
Compared to UFC 246 prelims last January, which also hosted a McGregor main event, prelims declined 27% in ratings and 19% in viewership from a 1.1 and 1.77 million.
