Consistency has been the key for the Ultimate Fighter in terms of ratings for season 17, while Bellator‘s ebb and flow continues as their transition to Spike TV builds to what they hope are much greater heights in 2013.
Ultimate Fighter Season 17 Picture of Consistency
When the Ultimate Fighter moved to Tuesday nights for this latest season, everyone knew that the ratings for the long running reality show were all but a sure thing to improve after being placed on what is a traditionally very tough Friday night time slot.
So far all the predictions have been correct, and while season 17 hasn’t been breaking all time records, the show has returned to its old form in terms of consistency.
Episode 7 of the Ultimate Fighter that aired last Thursday pulled in an average of 1.259 million viewers according to a report from the Nielsen TV ratings with a .7 ratings share in the coveted 18-49 demographic.
Those numbers are an indication that the Ultimate Fighter seems to have found its groove for the latest season featuring coaches Jon Jones and Chael Sonnen, along with a new night and time slot ahead of the FX hit show Justified, which airs directly after TUF 17.
Here are the ratings for the Ultimate Fighter so far to this point in the season:
Episode 1: 1.51 million average
Episode 2: 1.30 million average
Episode 3: 1.20 million average
Episode 4: 1.25 million average
Episode 5: 1.13 million average
Episode 6: 1.14 million average
Episode 7: 1.259 million average
UFC president Dana White was also happy with the latest ratings, and has continued to rave about the show and the accolades they’ve received from FX as well. This season is a dramatic improvement over last year when the show aired on Friday nights at 10pm with coaches Roy Nelson and Shane Carwin.
Season 16 of the reality show averaged well below 1 million viewers per episode and routinely dropped below the 700,000 viewer average. The new season has been a hit in comparison with other FX programs.
FX Senior Vice President of Public Relations John Solberg also raved about the improvements of the Ultimate Fighter after episode six aired two weeks ago.
This week will mark the final preliminary bout of the season when Zak Cummings takes on Dylan Andrews as the show moves past the halfway point for the season, and starts heading towards the home stretch and the finale in mid-April.
Bellator Ratings Up and Down Again
Bellator has a new home at Spike TV and so far this season there have definitely been a lot more eyeballs on their product that past years when they ran shows on much smaller networks like MTV2.
The problem Bellator seems to be having is finding out exactly when and where their audience is going to tune in week-to-week.
The latest Bellator show that took place last Thursday March 7 airing at 10pm featuring middleweight and featherweight tournament semifinals drew an average rating of 741,000 viewers for the two-hour broadcast.
While the star power on the latest show wasn’t as big, the previous week that featured a lackluster title bout between Christian M’Pumbu and Attila Vegh actually pulled in the second highest ratings since the promotion debuted on the network. Bellator 91 averaged 901,000 viewers and actually peaked at 1.05 million viewers during the title fight.
That show actually landed Bellator at No. 5 amongst basic cable networks in the male 18-49 demographic.
The previous week, which featured the finals of the Bellator featherweight tournament as well as the second fight for “King” Mo Lawal under the promotion’s banner drew in 791,000 viewers.
The season average for Bellator this year is still over 800,000 per episode, which is a rousing success compared the average viewers they were able to draw while on MTV2 or any other network they’ve been at prior to Spike TV.
The average viewers have spiked and fallen on a few occasions, but overall through eight weeks on Spike TV, Bellator has increased their viewership massively and their hope has to be to reach towards the one million viewer average by the close of 2013. Bellator will also launch their first reality show later this year with Fight Master debuting sometime in the summer before the next season of fights begins on Spike TV.
The next Bellator show takes place on Thursday night, March 21 with lightweights Dave Jansen taking on Marcin Held as well as heavyweight action on the card.
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