Earlier this year, the UFC launched its inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter Live on FX with high expectations. Unfortunately, The Ultimate Fighter on FX absolutely tanked. It was one of the least watched seasons of The Ultimate Fighter ever.
There is no shortage of analysis on what went wrong. Maybe it was because they selected coaches from the Bantamweight division, a weight class that is still struggling to gain widespread fan interest. Perhaps the live format was to blame. Maybe moving TUF from Spike TV to FX was a move that lost casual viewers who weren’t paying attention to all the commercials telling them that the change was coming.
At this point, figuring out what went wrong isn’t really the most important task at hand. Putting together the most watched season ever of The Ultimate Fighter is all that really matters.
So how do you accomplish such a lofty goal?