The UFC’s steeply declining ratings for their FOX network specials have been one of the hottest topics going this week.
The first FOX show in November, featuring a heavyweight title fight between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos, did 5.6 million viewers according to Nielsen ratings. The show was heavily promoted during all FOX broadcasts, including National Football League and Major League Baseball games.
The second show in January, featuring a light heavyweight contender bout between Rashad Evans and Phil Davis, did 4.6 million viewers. There was less promotion for the event during sports broadcasts on the network, but advertising was still visible.
Last Saturday’s show with Nate Diaz and Jim Miller did just 2.4 million viewers. It still scored well in the highly coveted 18-49 male demographic but finished dead last against other programing in its time slot. It was also one of the least-watched MMA broadcasts in network television history.
It seems like a cause for alarm. And perhaps it is. There’s no real way to spin the numbers into a positive angle, so I won’t even try. But UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta says he’s not worried by the sharp decline in numbers, especially given the competition they were up against on Saturday night:
“If The Avengers did [a box office of] over $200 million for the weekend, unfortunately for us, there were a great number of our potential viewers sitting in a movie theater somewhere,” he said. “Or, they were out that night celebrating Cinco de Mayo. Listen, I’m not trying to make excuses. Hats off to HBO and Bernard Hopkins. That’s a great job and a great number they pulled. But when you say, ‘Are we concerned,’ I’d say no. We’re excited.
“We had a situation where 2.5 million people, which I would say is still a substantial number, got to see what I would say was a tremendous product. All four fights were great fights and in the main event, Nate Diaz showed he’s potentially a breakout star who down the road could move the needle for us on pay-per-view. The playbook is playing out for us exactly the way we wanted it to.”
Fertitta is right in noting that the UFC was going up against big competition last Saturday. But there are still lessons to be learned from the declining FOX ratings.
1. Stars are still the thing that draw casual viewers: I was just as excited as the next hardcore fan for the fight between Jim Miller and Nathan Diaz. I think I was equally as excited for the rest of the fights on the card, too. All of them were intriguing and must-sees for me.
But I don’t represent the casual audience. Not by a long shot. I’ll watch any fights I can get my hands on, and there are a lot of you out there who feel the same way. But we represent a small slice of the potential viewing audience for MMA on network television.
In order to capture that audience, you must either headline a show with fighters that have name value or with something like the heavyweight title fight. It has to be a can’t-miss event, where you get folks talking around the proverbial (and literal) water cooler in the days leading up to fight night. That’s why the Dos Santos/Velasquez fight worked so well; it was hyped as one of the biggest fights in the history of the sport. It didn’t play out that way, but it didn’t matter—by that point, the audience had already tuned in.
A lot of you will groan at this suggestion, but taking someone like Tito Ortiz and placing him in the headlining bout on FOX is the ideal situation. You don’t want to cannibalize your PPV’s—where you get the majority of your income—by headlining every network event with a title fight featuring huge stars. But putting someone like Ortiz or Forrest Griffin in that situation is just about perfect. Neither of them will be headlining a UFC pay-per-view any time soon, but both of them have the name value to draw in fans.
Once you’ve attracted that audience, you can expose them to younger fighters you want to build into stars by having them fight on the undercard.
2. Advertising is key: As I mentioned above, there was very little advertising to be found for UFC on FOX 3. The previous shows were highlighted multiple times during major NFL games; I don’t think I saw a single commercial for Nate Diaz vs. Jim Miller running during FOX television shows in the weeks leading up to the fight.
Part of that can be blamed on the season. There aren’t any NFL games on FOX that can be used as a vehicle to promote your fights, and baseball is relegated to the weekends. But you still have to push the shows heavily on your network.
Find the sitcoms or long-form, hourly shows that do your best ratings among a wide demographic. Use those shows to push that you’ve got a chance to see some of the brightest young stars in the sport competing for free on Saturday night. It won’t be as effective as running ads during NFL games, but it’s better than nothing.
This rating wasn’t the end of the world for the UFC, but changes do need to be made.
The fourth FOX show in August is scheduled to be headlined by the debuting Hector Lombard vs. Brian Stann. Now that we’ve seen the rating for the Diaz/Miller fight, I believe that to be a mistake.
The UFC wants to push Brian Stann as a mainstream star, and FOX is a great vehicle for doing that. And I believe Stann has the potential to be one of the UFC’s most marketable stars. But he’s not on that level yet, and people won’t tune in to see Stann taking on a fighter that nobody outside of the hardcore fan community has heard of.
In an ideal world, I would take the Ortiz/Griffin fight that’s scheduled for UFC 148 and move it to the headlining slot at UFC on FOX 4. Losing the fight won’t lessen the impact of UFC 148 one bit; that card has two title fights, and one of them—the rematch between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen—is one of the most anticipated fights in UFC history.
I’m looking forward to seeing Ortiz and Griffin a third time, but I’d be willing to bet that few fans are buying the PPV just to see that fight. Take it, move it to the main event on FOX and highlight Stann vs. Lombard as the co-main event.
As I said, Saturday’s rating is not the end of the world. But it does need to be an eye-opener if the UFC wants to have a long and successful partnership with FOX.
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