It’s official: Bellator’s canceled pay-per-view was the greatest thing that ever happened to the promotion. (Called it!) According to a press release distributed today by Spike TV, Bellator 106: Chandler vs. Alvarez 2 delivered 1.1 million average viewers during the Spike telecast, which made it the most-watched event in Bellator history and the most watched mixed martial arts show on television this fall. As the release goes on to explain:
The “Chandler-Alvarez II” fight card peaked at 1.4 million viewers at 11:17pm and reached its high mark with Men 18-49 with a 1.1 rating for the Alvarez-Chandler bout. The telecast also ranked #2 in cable in its timeslot with Men 18-49.
For fans who missed the fight, or who recorded it but the end was cut off due to the extraordinary length of the event, Spike TV will replay the Chandler-Alvarez II main event bout on Friday, November 8 at 8:00pm ET/PT. The replay will lead into a live Bellator event featuring heavyweights Cheick Kongo vs. Peter Graham and a co-feature with lightweight contenders Joe Warren and Travis Marx.
Note to Bellator: Don’t brag about the “extraordinary length” of your event. That shit was nearly four hours long, and people almost died out here. (It’s worth noting that the audience peaked well before the main event had even begun.) On the plus side, it must feel amazing for Bellator to clown the UFC with that “most watched mixed martial arts show on television this fall” line, especially at a time when the UFC is probably kind of sensitive about that sort of thing.
It’s official: Bellator’s canceled pay-per-view was the greatest thing that ever happened to the promotion. (Called it!) According to a press release distributed today by Spike TV, Bellator 106: Chandler vs. Alvarez 2 delivered 1.1 million average viewers during the Spike telecast, which made it the most-watched event in Bellator history and the most watched mixed martial arts show on television this fall. As the release goes on to explain:
The “Chandler-Alvarez II” fight card peaked at 1.4 million viewers at 11:17pm and reached its high mark with Men 18-49 with a 1.1 rating for the Alvarez-Chandler bout. The telecast also ranked #2 in cable in its timeslot with Men 18-49.
For fans who missed the fight, or who recorded it but the end was cut off due to the extraordinary length of the event, Spike TV will replay the Chandler-Alvarez II main event bout on Friday, November 8 at 8:00pm ET/PT. The replay will lead into a live Bellator event featuring heavyweights Cheick Kongo vs. Peter Graham and a co-feature with lightweight contenders Joe Warren and Travis Marx.
Note to Bellator: Don’t brag about the “extraordinary length” of your event. That shit was nearly four hours long, and people almost died out here. (It’s worth noting that the audience peaked well before the main event had even begun.) On the plus side, it must feel amazing for Bellator to clown the UFC with that “most watched mixed martial arts show on television this fall” line, especially at a time when the UFC is probably kind of sensitive about that sort of thing.
Shortly after Bellator 106, Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney said that he’d like to do the rubber-match between Eddie Alvarez and Michael Chandler on pay-per-view. Hopefully these Spike TV numbers will make him realize that not being on pay-per-view is what made the success of this event possible. Granted, not all of Bellator’s future shows will be able to draw as many eyeballs as this, but if they can occasionally put on events headlined by genuinely exciting fights, fans will tune in.
And just to clarify — Chandler vs. Alvarez is a genuinely exciting fight. Rampage vs Tito is not.
(If you think Bellator’s main carders are old, you obviously haven’t checked out their prelims in a while…)
After months of rolling our eyes while trying to make sense of Bellator’s new “sign pretty much anyone the UFC cuts and pray that it boosts our ratings” business model, the ratings for Bellator 99 – the promotion’s first show as The MMA Senior Circuit – are finally in.
Now, how you chose to interpret these numbers depends entirely on who you feel like being cynical towards this afternoon.
(If you think Bellator’s main carders are old, you obviously haven’t checked out their prelims in a while…)
After months of rolling our eyes while trying to make sense of Bellator’s new “sign pretty much anyone the UFC cuts and pray that it boosts our ratings” business model, the ratings for Bellator 99 – the promotion’s first show as The MMA Senior Circuit – are finally in.
Now, how you chose to interpret these numbers depends entirely on who you feel like being cynical towards this afternoon.
– On one hand, you can view the ratings boost as a sign that UFC veterans like Vladimir Matyushenko and Houston Alexander – despite being well past their sell-by dates – can still draw in the casual MMA fans, simply because they’re guys that the casual fans have actually heard of. You can’t have two nobodies headline an event and then act surprised when the casual fans don’t tune in – even if said nobodies are two of the best non-Zuffa middleweights on the planet. Perhaps the same way that signing David Beckham caused casual sports fans to take Major League Soccer seriously, the UFC castoffs will get causal MMA fans to consider Bellator a worthy alternative to the UFC. Make that we as human beings value namerecognition more than talent and potential whatever you will.
– On the other hand, if you only feel like being cynical towards Bellator instead of humanity in general, you can point out that Bellator 99 didn’t have nearly as much competition as Bellator 98 did. Bellator 98 had to compete against NCAA Football and NASCAR (don’t laugh, it’s true) for the casual sports fans’ attention. With that in mind, can we really pin Bellator’s improved ratings on Diego “I once lost to KenFlo you remember that right?” Nunes?
It’ll be interesting to track how guys like Cheick Kongo, John Alessio and Paul Sass move the needle for Bellator, but until then, what do you think affected Bellator’s ratings more?
The study of TV trends/viewership is an interesting and incredibly thorough one, but there is perhaps no television trend more notorious than the Friday Night Death Slot, which maintains that any program placed in the graveyard slot (approximately 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) on a Friday night is ultimately destined for cancellation. Countless examples can be cited to back this theory: Malcolm in the Middle, Firefly, the criminally overlooked Happy Endings, and of course, Fridays. In fact, the dreaded time slot can even be held (at least partially) accountable for the abysmal ratings of TUF 15and TUF 16.
Of course, some scheisters out there will try to convince you that Friday night is primo advertising time, throwing all sorts of fancy “facts” and “numerical data” at you in the process, which probably explains why Bellator is voluntarily moving their events to Friday nights starting in the fall. Loretta Hunt was the first to pass along the news:
To avoid the NFL crush, Bellator MMA will move from Thursday to Friday nights this fall, Spike TV president Kevin Kay exclusively told SI.com during a screening this week forFight Master, its original MMA reality series debuting on June 19.
I don’t want to see Bellator going head to head with the UFC,” said Kay. “I don’t think that makes any sense for fans. No matter who would win in that scenario (Author’s note: The answer you’re looking for is “the UFC”), you don’t want to not give the fans the choice to watch both.
Kay goes on to cite TUF 16 as an *example* of a show doing well during the Friday slot, as well as the Discovery Channel’s “Gold Rush”, which averages 4 million viewers on Friday nights. Yes, a show that captures all the drama of sifting through sand reels in 4 million of us — week, after week, after mind-numbing week — before we switch over to the History Channel to watch people drive trucks across icy roads for the eighth year in a row. Meanwhile, Arrested Development was cancelled after 3 seasons. This is why we can’t have nice things, Nation.
The study of TV trends/viewership is an interesting and incredibly thorough one, but there is perhaps no television trend more notorious than the Friday Night Death Slot, which maintains that any program placed in the graveyard slot (approximately 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) on a Friday night is ultimately destined for cancellation. Countless examples can be cited to back this theory: Malcolm in the Middle, Firefly, the criminally overlooked Happy Endings, and of course, Fridays. In fact, the dreaded time slot can even be held (at least partially) accountable for the abysmal ratings of TUF 15and TUF 16.
Of course, some scheisters out there will try to convince you that Friday night is primo advertising time, throwing all sorts of fancy “facts” and “numerical data” at you in the process, which probably explains why Bellator is voluntarily moving their events to Friday nights starting in the fall. Loretta Hunt was the first to pass along the news:
To avoid the NFL crush, Bellator MMA will move from Thursday to Friday nights this fall, Spike TV president Kevin Kay exclusively told SI.com during a screening this week forFight Master, its original MMA reality series debuting on June 19.
I don’t want to see Bellator going head to head with the UFC,” said Kay. “I don’t think that makes any sense for fans. No matter who would win in that scenario (Author’s note: The answer you’re looking for is “the UFC”), you don’t want to not give the fans the choice to watch both.
Kay goes on to cite TUF 16 as an *example* of a show doing well during the Friday slot, as well as the Discovery Channel’s “Gold Rush”, which averages 4 million viewers on Friday nights. Yes, a show that captures all the drama of sifting through sand reels in 4 million of us — week, after week, after mind-numbing week — before we switch over to the History Channel to watch people drive trucks across icy roads for the eighth year in a row. Meanwhile, Arrested Development was cancelled after 3 seasons. This is why we can’t have nice things, Nation.
“With all due respect to Spike… Mr. Hill, Mr. Shanks, and I have 50 gross rating points and promotions in the cushions of our couches.”– President of FX, John Landgraf, on the performance of TUF on Spike (8/18/11)
There’s a lot to be said about the declining ratings of The Ultimate Fighter since the move to FX and rightfully so. FX has yet to see the same success as TUF had when it was on Spike. However, as John Landgraf pointed out during the August 2011 press conference announcing the deal with the UFC and Fox, Spike simply does not hold a candle to the ratings delivery that FX gets. When you compare the numbers on a national level, he’s right.
Just take a look at the Nielson Prime-time numbers from 3Q11:
(Click to enlarge)
Comparing the two networks, FX has an increase of the 18-34 and 18-49 demos on both impressions delivered as well as the ratings share over Spike. It’s also important to realize that according to the Cable Advertising Bureau, Spike is available in close to 99 million homes, where FX is in just over 97 million. In other words, FX still manages to attract move viewers, despite being in less than 2 million homes than Spike.
(Struggling towards victory in the middle of a barren wasteland — an apt metaphor for Friday-night television, if you think about it.)
“With all due respect to Spike… Mr. Hill, Mr. Shanks, and I have 50 gross rating points and promotions in the cushions of our couches.”– President of FX, John Landgraf, on the performance of TUF on Spike (8/18/11)
There’s a lot to be said about the declining ratings of The Ultimate Fighter since the move to FX and rightfully so. FX has yet to see the same success as TUF had when it was on Spike. However, as John Landgraf pointed out during the August 2011 press conference announcing the deal with the UFC and Fox, Spike simply does not hold a candle to the ratings delivery that FX gets. When you compare the numbers on a national level, he’s right.
Just take a look at the Nielson Prime-time numbers from 3Q11:
(Click to enlarge)
Comparing the two networks, FX has an increase of the 18-34 and 18-49 demos on both impressions delivered as well as the ratings share over Spike. It’s also important to realize that according to the Cable Advertising Bureau, Spike is available in close to 99 million homes, where FX is in just over 97 million. In other words, FX still manages to attract move viewers, despite being in less than 2 million homes than Spike.
Moving a program to a different night of the week is always a risky move and it’s never done lightly. It should be noted that while FX is the home for TUF, the program is actually sold as a property under the Fox Sports group. Any advertisement deals involving the UFC are separate from any deals with the non-sports related programs that air on FX. When addressing a change in a program’s schedule, one must consider the risk/reward aspect of making such a change.
FX’s programmers likely looked at their Wednesday night delivery numbers and compared that with the numbers on Spike. The case can be made that Wednesday Nights on FX was already delivering higher ratings than Spike, therefore, airing TUF on Wednesday would be an unnecessary move. So the question for Fox Cable execs was, “where will the network most benefit from the TUF Property?”
The answer is Friday nights.
As most TV enthusiasts know, Friday and Saturday evenings are two of the worst nights for attracting viewers. Advertising is often guaranteed on the number of impressions (ie people watching) and not on the actual program being aired, and it becomes a hard sell to advertisers since media buyers know that airing on these nights won’t likely reach their guarantees. Many cable networks package these nights to advertisers as “anthology” titles. The network is basically airing content for the sake of airing content. From the media-buyers point of view, they are least likely to invest heavily in any program packaged to them like “FX Friday Night Movie” where you would catch Big Momma’s House 2. These time-slots are most likely going to have a few national paid units, but will most likely consist of Direct Response ads (i.e., our favorite hooker-beating victim, the Sham-wow Guy) or zero-dollar make-good units (basically free advertising given to the national advertisers to increase delivery ratings).
At the end of the day, here’s what the network execs are probably thinking (a dramatization if you will): “We have a day where we are very undersold, we now have a property that we can monetize. Should we continue plugging in make-good units? Or should we fill an hour of Friday Prime with paid advertisers?”
The answer is simple, put in TUF and sell it. Even though last season saw a downtick in the ratings, the show still performed above the network estimates and thus delivered on the guaranteed impressions needed to fulfill the network’s deals with advertisers. In other words, the network didn’t lose money or owe the advertisers additional make-good units to fulfill their end of the deal. Not only that, but the network saw an increase in their Friday Primetime ratings average with The Ultimate Fighter than their six-month-prior Friday Prime average. Whether that trend will apply to this season has yet to be seen.
Has the UFC brand been a homerun for the Fox group like Dana White said? Well, it depends on how you look at it. The numbers on Big Fox still lacks the luster to warrant it a success. Simply put, as one anonymous ESPN insider said, “it’s (The UFC on Fox) a special that airs once every few months and should get a higher rating than a Knicks regular season game.” He’s got a point there. But let’s look at the cable side of things. Fuel, the network that most people have no idea what channel it’s on, has already seen significant leaps in its ratings which will likely result in a wider cable distribution and better channel placement on major cable providers. On pay-per-view nights, FX has seen ratings increase by taking advantage of airing the prelims by strategically piggy-backing male-skewing movies immediately following the free fights. Right now, yes, the UFC has been a homerun for Fox Cable Networks.
Still not convinced? Let’s take a look at the numbers pulled earlier and see what 3Q12 looks like:
(Click to enlarge)
Obviously, the first thing you’ll notice is that both networks have a decrease in ratings and impressions delivery from the prior year, which can be contributed to the recent London Olympics airing this past summer, which will be seen by all networks not airing the Olympics in 3Q12. With the exception of P18-49, the ratings between Spike and FX increased in every demographic. M18-34 saw a substantial jump where FX expanded their lead over Spike by 19% in ratings and 18% in delivered impressions. That’s a pretty sizable increase especially considering that ratings were down across the board due to the London Olympics.
(Click to enlarge)
What’s next? Well, if ratings continue to drop, the Fox Cable execs will relook at the strategy and probably tinker with it a little more. It wouldn’t be surprising to see TUF move from FX to Fuel. Fox Cable did a similar move to the popular “Dog Whisperer” series when it began to decline on The National Geographic Channel, and then moved it to the lesser distributed Nat Geo Wild channel to help bolster the ratings on the smaller net. That would be the most likely scenario we will see if the trend continues. So for those of you who will miss the “propping a bag of flour over the front door” prank — it never gets old! — rest assured, you’ll still see the show. Despite last week’s poor ratings draw on the Fuel prelims, the UFC brand has been very good to the emerging network where there has been a steady increase in ratings since the acquisition of the UFC brand.
Earlier this year Bloomberg reported that Fox News Corp will be looking to launch a sports network that will rival ESPN. Currently, Fox holds the rights to MLB, NFL, and various football conferences, properties that ESPN also holds broadcasting rights to. The ace in the hole would be Fox’s broadcast rights to the FIFA World Cup and the UFC, two properties that ESPN does not have the rights too. Since the World Cup only occurs every four years, Fox would likely utilize the UFC as their “ace-kicker” as a way to one-up the “world-wide leader in sports.” Once you compare the ESPN/Fox tale of the tape, Fox has the advantage in combat sports with the UFC.
Everything else is practically identical.
What about your thoughts, Nation? Sing loud and sing proud in the comment section (but be nice, this is my first column here on CP).
Oliver Chan (aka ‘O Chan’) is a former cable ad-sales planner and network insider who often becomes furious at our doom-and-gloom coverage of TUF ratings. You can follow him on twitter @OliverwhChan.
Even though FUEL TV is still unavailable to most Americans, the UFC been a consistent draw for the channel. When FUEL TV aired the preliminary fights from UFC on FX 1, it set a company ratings record with an average of 148,000 viewers. This number was almost matched by the prelims for UFC on FOX 2, which averaged 144,000.
Even though FUEL TV is still unavailable to most Americans, the UFC been a consistent draw for the channel. When FUEL TV aired the preliminary fights from UFC on FX 1, it set a company ratings record with an average of 148,000 viewers. This number was almost matched by the prelims for UFC on FOX 2, which averaged 144,000.
Not bad for a channel that most of the people reading this don’t get.
Of course, the 217,000 viewers that UFC on FUEL brought in still amounts to roughly 1/3 of what the Diego Sanchez-themed episode of UFC Unleashed brought Spike TV (661,000 viewers). However, Spike TV is currently available in roughly sixty five million more homes in the United States than FUEL TV.
It can be said that FUEL TV’s viewers have been consistently supporting the UFC- fans with access to the channel have been showing up in record numbers, after all. However, the reality is still that while FUEL TV is expanding, most Americans still don’t have access to the channel, meaning most Americans simply can’t watch the UFC’s events on FUEL. It will be interesting to track the UFC’s ratings as the network expands.
