While Showtime executives do not traditionally release ratings figures,
early estimates for this past week’s “Strikeforce St. Louis: Heavy
Artillery” event put the average Showtime viewership at 308,000.
While some MMA pundits have declared the figure a failure and a sign
that Strikeforce’s deal with the premium cable channel may be in
trouble, sources close to the partnership indicated to MMAjunkie.com that quite the opposite is true.
While quarter-hour figures, which often rise during mixed martial arts
events, were not released, the sources indicated that the “Strikeforce
St. Louis: Heavy Artillery” broadcast peaked during the main event of
Alistair Overeem vs. Brett Rogers with 448,000 viewers.