(Well, you can’t say he didn’t warn you. / Photo courtesy of Getty Images. Click for full-size version.)
According to a Yahoo! Sports report, Saturday’s UFC on FOX 5 broadcast averaged 4.4 million viewers, with viewership climbing steadily through the night until it peaked at a hearty 5.7 million sets of eyeballs for the main event of Benson Henderson vs. Nate Diaz.
Although total viewership still fell short of the first two UFC on FOX offerings, the 4.4 million average for “Henderson vs. Diaz” nearly doubled the audiences of the last two FOX broadcasts, which both averaged just 2.4 million viewers apiece. More importantly, “Henderson vs. Diaz” was television’s most-watched broadcast on Saturday night among males 18-34, males 18-49, adults 18-34, and adults 18-49. As Dana White told Yahoo!: “We just killed it. We killed it in every demo.”
(Well, you can’t say he didn’t warn you. / Photo courtesy of Getty Images. Click for full-size version.)
According to a Yahoo! Sports report, Saturday’s UFC on FOX 5 broadcast averaged 4.4 million viewers, with viewership climbing steadily through the night until it peaked at a hearty 5.7 million sets of eyeballs for the main event of Benson Henderson vs. Nate Diaz.
Although total viewership still fell short of the first two UFC on FOX offerings, the 4.4 million average for “Henderson vs. Diaz” nearly doubled the audiences of the last two FOX broadcasts, which both averaged just 2.4 million viewers apiece. More importantly, “Henderson vs. Diaz” was television’s most-watched broadcast on Saturday night among males 18-34, males 18-49, adults 18-34, and adults 18-49. As Dana White told Yahoo!: “We just killed it. We killed it in every demo.”
“The 5.7 million viewers drawn by the main event would rank it behind only five UFC fights in history: [#1] the record-breaking Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos fight on November 12, 2001, which did 9.6 million viewers between FOX and Fox Deportes; [#3] the Oct. 10, 2006, Ken Shamrock vs. Tito Ortiz fight on Spike, which did 6.5 million viewers; [#5] the Jan. 28, 2012, Rashad Evans vs. Phil Davis fight on FOX and Fox Deportes, that did 6.4 million viewers; [#6] the Sept. 30, 2009, taped fight on the Ultimate Fighter reality show with Kimbo Slice vs. Roy Nelson, which did 6.1 million viewers on Spike; and [#8] the Sept. 8, 2007, taped fight from England pitting Dan Henderson vs. Rampage Jackson for the light heavyweight title, which did 5.8 million viewers on Spike.
The only other fights it trailed were Kimbo Slice fights on CBS with James Thompson[#2: 7.281 million viewers] and Seth Petruzelli[#4: 6.451 million viewers], and the first Robbie Lawler vs. Scott Smith fight [#7: 5.867 million viewers], which aired before Slice vs. Thompson on the first Elite XC show on CBS in 2008.
However, if you add in Spanish language viewership in the U.S. on Fox Deportes, numbers which are not available at press time, the total audience should top 6 million and move to either the No. 6 or No. 7 slot.”
In the past, Henderson has underperformed as a pay-per-view draw, but a brilliant fight against Diaz in front of a massive network audience might change all that. Can Bendo become the UFC’s next breakout star?
“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.
(Where the hell do y’all think you’re going?! Please, I’m begging you, if you stick around, I’ll even break out the Techno Viking dance!)
We can’t wait to see how Dana White tries to spin this one.
The numbers were just released for all of last weekend’s UFC events. The good news: The main FX card did pretty well and the fourth episode of The Ultimate Fighter hit a seasonal high in terms of viewership (take that with a grain of salt). The bad news: The FUEL prelims were caught by less people than the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee prelims on ESPN 3. Probably.
You see, last Friday’s FUEL prelims only managed to draw in 44,000 viewers, absolutely shattering the promotion’s previous FUEL prelim low of 84,000 for UFC on FX 3. If these kind of numbers do not improve, the UFC won’t have to worry about emerging victorious from a ratings war with the WWE because they will be too busy trying to compete with the Punkin Chunkin people. We expect DW to start lobbing insults at “those four-eyed f*cking scumbag f*cks on the Lience Channel” any day now.
(Where the hell do y’all think you’re going?! Please, I’m begging you, if you stick around, I’ll even break out the Techno Viking dance!)
We can’t wait to see how Dana White tries to spin this one.
The numbers were just released for all of last weekend’s UFC events. The good news: The main FX card did pretty well and the fourth episode of The Ultimate Fighter hit a seasonal high in terms of viewership (take that with a grain of salt). The bad news: The FUEL prelims were caught by less people than the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee prelims on ESPN 3. Probably.
You see, last Friday’s FUEL prelims only managed to draw in 44,000 viewers, absolutely shattering the promotion’s previous FUEL prelim low of 84,000 for UFC on FX 3. If these kind of numbers do not improve, the UFC won’t have to worry about emerging victorious from a ratings war with the WWE because they will be too busy trying to compete with the Punkin Chunkin people. We expect DW to start lobbing insults at “those four-eyed f*cking scumbag f*cks on the Lience Channel” any day now.
In all seriousness, at least part of the insane drop can be attributed to the fact that last weekend’s prelims started one hour earlier than normal — at 5 p.m. EST rather than 6 p.m. — meaning that many West Coast viewers would still likely be working or on their way home when the fights began. That being said, we don’t think a one hour difference could be the sole factor behind a 75% drop from the UFC on FX 4 prelims, which managed to reel in over 160,000 viewers. Although the card suffered some last minute setbacks, we also can’t imagine that the absence of Jeremy Stephens and Dennis Hallman were responsible for this ratings drop either.
At this point, we don’t know what to say really. While it’s not exactly crisis mode for the UFC, there’s no way they can be completely satisfied with such continually disappointing numbers. Say what you want about “Spuke TV”, but they sure as hell knew how to market The Ultimate Fighter and the prelim events better than FX does. I can’t remember the last time I saw an advertisement for the prelims more than a day or two out from when they were scheduled to air, which seems to be the main problem FX is facing: awareness. With a UFC event happening practically every weekend, FX needs to start advertising each event earlier and with more frequency if they expect to bring in more viewers.
Then again, it could simply be a case of the UFC spreading themselves too thin. Think about it, most cable-accessible UFC events begin with a live stream on Facebook, then a few fights on FUEL, then the main card on FX. Aside from the fact that most of the country does not get FUEL even with special cable packages — I have a 160 channel package that doesn’t — asking your viewing audience to keep jumping through hoops to watch a few fights featuring lower-level fighters seems like a counterproductive strategy. Only die hard fans of the sport will make the effort to catch every single fight, and they must often resort to illegal streams and other means to do so because of the variety of channels and mediums through which the UFC broadcasts their content on a given night.
The question now becomes: What can the UFC/FX do to boost these ratings?
(A stranglehold on the competition, or on the sport in general?)
We don’t know about you, but as we were watching last weekend’s UFC on FX 3 event in our various states of drunken stupor, we couldn’t help but notice a few glaring observations. The first was that the term “dicknailed” will always be both appropriate and hilarious when describing knockouts like the one Mike Pyle delivered on Josh Neer in the first round of their welterweight affair. The second revelation, however, was much more disheartening. As we looked past the fighters and into the stands, it was pretty shocking to see how little of a crowd was actually in attendance. “What is this, a Super Fight League card?” we said to ourselves, then collectively tweeted to one another like a bunch of snickering high school girls. But the simple truth is, our Stalter and Waldorf attitudes were nothing more than a defense mechanism, a cover, if you will, for something we feared might be happening: The UFC is stretching themselves a little thin.
Sure, UFC on FX 3 was as under-promoted as it was lacking any sort of star power, so much so that I will personally admit to all but completely forgetting about its existence until BG reminded us why we should be stoked in the first place. And sure, as with this season of The Ultimate Fighter, the fact that the card was scheduled for a Friday night surely didn’t help gain any new viewers either (a move that should most certainly be retracted next season if TUF ever hopes to recover ratings wise). Be that as it may, the real problem with last weekend’s card was certainly not that of the fight quality (because they were all great fights), but rather part of the looming, aforementioned oversaturation problem the UFC may find themselves facing. And here’s why.
(A stranglehold on the competition, or on the sport in general?)
We don’t know about you, but as we were watching last weekend’s UFC on FX 3 event in our various states of drunken stupor, we couldn’t help but notice a few glaring observations. The first was that the term “dicknailed” will always be both appropriate and hilarious when describing knockouts like the one Mike Pyle delivered on Josh Neer in the first round of their welterweight affair. The second revelation, however, was much more disheartening. As we looked past the fighters and into the stands, it was pretty shocking to see how little of a crowd was actually in attendance. “What is this, a Super Fight League card?” we said to ourselves, then collectively tweeted to one another like a bunch of snickering high school girls. But the simple truth is, our Stalter and Waldorf attitudes were nothing more than a defense mechanism, a cover, if you will, for something we feared might be happening: The UFC is stretching themselves a little thin.
Sure, UFC on FX 3 was as under-promoted as it was lacking any sort of star power, so much so that I will personally admit to all but completely forgetting about its existence until BG reminded us why we should be stoked in the first place. And sure, as with this season of The Ultimate Fighter, the fact that the card was scheduled for a Friday night surely didn’t help gain any new viewers either (a move that should most certainly be retracted next season if TUF ever hopes to recover ratings wise). Be that as it may, the real problem with last weekend’s card was certainly not that of the fight quality (because they were all great fights), but rather part of the looming, aforementioned over-saturation problem the UFC may find themselves facing. And here’s why.
As the UFC has increased its number of fight cards seemingly exponentially over the past few years, each individual card has in turn lost a significant amount of hype amongst its audience. This may just be subjectivity on our part, but we feel as if most of you would more or less agree with this point. We’re not going to act like the UFC’s marketing department doesn’t know how to milkthe shit out of a “grudge match” or title fight, but when comparing the UFC’s schedule, say, five years ago, to its current one, the most obvious difference one can notice is the amount of cards held per year. In 2007, the UFC held 19 events, with an average of one pay-per-view card being held each month with some Fight Night and TUF Finale cards sprinkled throughout. In 2011, the UFC put out 26 cards, with nine of them being either Fight Night, TUF Finale, or UFC Live type cards, which have never done great in terms of viewership. Although there may not be a direct correlation between these two things, would it surprise you to learn that last year was the UFC’s worst year for PPV buys since 2008, with the average buy rate being the worst since 2007? The UFC’s total buyrate dropped from 9.215 million in 2010 to just 6.79 million last year, and while Dana White is willing to pass off last weekend’s abysmal attendance/TV ratings to Florida being a shitty place for MMA, we think there may be other issues at hand. For instance, the UFC’s last trip to Florida, which was headlined by Rashad Evansvs. Sean Salmon, drew both a higher gate and attendance than last weekend’s event.
But before we get into all that, we’d like you to think back to mid-2007, if your brains aren’t too clogged with malted hops and bong resin to do so. Chuck Liddell was still the baddest man on the planet (until May 26th came around) and Randy Couture had just capped off the most improbable career comeback in ever by defeating Tim Sylvia at UFC 68 in March, capturing the heavyweight title once again in the process. Sound familiar? It should, because to this day, UFC 68 still holds the record for being the largest attended MMA event in the United States.
As you can see, it’s not like the cards just a few years ago were exactly stacked with more talent compared to today’s average card. Then why, pretell, were we seemingly more excited for them? The answer is simply because just five years ago, it was almost a privilege to witness a UFC event. We’re not trying to act like hipsters here, but before the UFC started gaining network deals left and right, it wasn’t every weekend that we were treated to the gift that is a fight card, as is nearly the case today.
When big fights were more sparsely scattered throughout the year, each individual card was given a few weeks more time to stew, if you will, and gain interest from any on-the-fence fans that may have existed at the time. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the UFC’s current policy of jamming two, and sometimes three cards into a month gives even the most enthusiastic fans little time to truly take stock of a given fight before another is billed as “the next big thing in the ______ division.”
As the kind of fan that simply cannot get enough of the sport, the idea of being treated to more fights for free excited me more than when I received my first Nintendo 64 for Christmas, but even I am a little overwhelmed by the amount of unknown and less than intriguing matchups that are being put before me these days. Then again, fans like myself (and most of the Potato Nation staff/readers) are not the kind of fans that the UFC is trying to reel in. Because the “hardcore” fans will always stand by the sport we love, until it becomes insanely obvious that the fights are being fixed, that is. The UFC is trying to bring in new markets, different crowds, and wider audiences to truly lift the sport into the realm of the NBA and NFL, but the difference between the “major” sports and the UFC is that those sports have an off season for both fans and players to recover, rebuild their rosters, and hype the upcoming season. The fact the the UFC has no off period is both a blessing and a curse, because it gives the fans so little time to do this. The closest thing to an off season an MMA fan ever had used to be the four or so weeks off in between cards, but the abundance of events to spring up in the past few years have perhaps spoiled us a bit in the process. In short, there’s a reason that March Madness blows the roof off of most other sporting events in terms of pure hype and interest. In fact, we guarantee that most of you, college basketball fans or not, at least filled out one bracket to partake in the festivities this year. Hell, your grandmothers probably did.
But the problem the UFC is facing is that, by simply delivering quantity over quality, they might just be risking over-saturating their market in terms of interest. The fact that injuries have wiped out nearly every fight we were looking forward to this summer surely isn’t helping matters, but the problems these weak cards face could just as easily be solved by combining the best matchups from a couple of cards into one stacked lineup. Let’s be real here, Aldo vs. Koch (now Faber vs. Barao), Munoz vs. Weidman, and Shogun vs. Vera are pretty pathetic headliners for a sport that has nearly acquired a monopoly on the sport’s top talent, and unless there are some major changes made, the buyrate for these events will likely reflect the lack of exciting matchups at hand. While combining/spacing events may mean that the promotion has to sideline, or even cut, some of it’s lesser fighters is an unfortunate side effect, but the UFC actually has the roster to deliver amazing cards capable of reaching the Brock Lesnar or Jon Jones levels of PPV buys every time if those in charge would just space out them out on occasion.
Look no further than the UFC on FOX’s downwardly spiraling ratings if you need proof of this. The first event, which only featured one fight, mind you, reeled in over five and a half million viewers. Why? Because the one and only fight they showed was a title fight between an undefeated champion and the most deadly number one contender known to man. The fight sells itself. Trying to sell a pair of “number one contender” bouts between Rashad Evans and Phil Davis or Jim Miller and Nate Diaz is not as easy of a task, regardless of how good (or in Evans/Davis’ case, bad) the fights are, simply because there is not as much at stake to garner interest. Again, last minute injuries were partially to blame for some of the FOX ratings, but so were the matchups. The upcoming UFC on FOX 4 event will likely see an even farther drop down the rankings due to this same issue as well.
Look at it this way, you wouldn’t headline a PPV card with any of those fights excluding Velasquez/dos Santos, and perhaps that is what some of the new fans are starting to realize. Being a business that wants to make money, the UFC saves its best cards for PPV’s, because who wouldn’t, and shell out mediocre to above average cards for live TV. And some fans may be sick of being fed the scraps.
To reiterate, I personally will never complain about free fights, but am rather simply pointing out what seems to be a trend in the UFC’s plateau of popularity as of late. And I’d rather not have my ass chewed out by DW for making such an observation, so at this point, I’d like to turn the focus on you Taters. Do you think the UFC could be giving its new fans too much, too fast? Or is even bringing up such a notion insanely idiotic?
You might have read one of the many stories recently on the ratings of the UFC on Fox event that took place Cinco de Mayo weekend. Dave Meltzer probably penned the most significant analysis, given that he’s been providing great business coverage of the sport since 1993. He also had some of the harshest words to describe UFC on Fox 3’s downward-trending numbers.
The overall viewership numbers were down nearly 50% from the previous UFC on FOX broadcast — and significantly lower than other network television MMA broadcasts in the past — and UFC President Dana White didn’t appreciate Meltzer saying so, making his feelings clear in a new video that you can watch above. White argued that his “doom and gloom” report failed to mention the many demographic ratings successes the UFC earned that night.
According to Bloody Elbow’s summary of Meltzer’s piece, published through his subscription-based newsletter, the Wrestling Observer, the writer pulled no punches in characterizing UFC on Fox 3 as a ratings failure:
You might have read one of the many stories recently on the ratings of the UFC on Fox event that took place Cinco de Mayo weekend. Dave Meltzer probably penned the most significant analysis, given that he’s been providing great business coverage of the sport since 1993. He also had some of the harshest words to describe UFC on Fox 3′s downward-trending numbers.
The overall viewership numbers were down nearly 50% from the previous UFC on FOX broadcast — and significantly lower than other network television MMA broadcasts in the past — and UFC President Dana White didn’t appreciate Meltzer saying so, making his feelings clear in a new video that you can watch above. White argued that his “doom and gloom” report failed to mention the many demographic ratings successes the UFC earned that night.
According to Bloody Elbow’s summary of Meltzer’s piece, published through his subscription-based newsletter, the Wrestling Observer, the writer pulled no punches in characterizing UFC on Fox 3 as a ratings failure:
Meltzer called it “a genuine XFL caliber ratings disaster,” comparing the UFC on FOX to Vince McMahon’s cursed football league from 2001. Meltzer also wrote that “FOX didn’t pay the money it did for the ratings it’s getting,” and brought up the possibility that the UFC has overexposed itself. “If the issue is that UFC has burned out its audience with too much product, and this is just an example of this, along with the TUF ratings, then it’s disastrous. The reason is, overexposure is a killer that it takes a long time to recover from,” Meltzer wrote.
Dana White is nothing if not passionate, and he tends to take criticism of himself or anything related to him very personally. That is understandable, to a point. White has spent the last decade fighting against the current to get his product – and, by extension, the entire sport of MMA – out in the mainstream. To say that the UFC is his baby and that White has a vested interest in its success is a huge understatement.
I happen to think that White’s accessibility and candor trickles down to fighters and how open they are to fans, and, collectively, that is what makes covering this sport for a living so much fun. So I’m personally glad that when White is upset about something he talks about it, instead of hiding behind prepared statements like the heads of other professional sports organizations/leagues.
So it isn’t surprising or necessarily bad that White decided to respond directly to Meltzer, but the way White did it was all vitrol and with no sense of proportion. In the short tirade that White recorded and had initially and inconceivably planned to originally have aired on FUEL’s UFC Tonight show — it makes very little sense to give a paid subscription newsletter that amount of exposure if you don’t agree with it — the Prez brings up good points that the media has wrongly painted the UFC on Fox 3 card as a ratings loser.
White pointed out that the card was the number one program of the night among many key male demographics and that during the last quarter hour they were the number one program among all adult and male demographics. No doubt, these are the demographics that Fox hoped to hit by buying UFC programming.
Shows that performed better that night at times had a much higher median age, while the UFC on Fox did better with younger adults – a coveted demo. White also said that the UFC on Fox beat the Spurs playoff game when they went head to head.
Problem is, White sandwiched those and other important ratings facts with personal attacks directed at Meltzer. White literally begins and ends his lil’ speech by making fun of Meltzer. “First of all, Dave,” Dana says in the video. “You know I like you, you know I respect you, but you just lost your job at Yahoo! And you want to give us business advice? I’m actually writing a story…of all the things I think you could have done to keep your job at Yahoo!”
Yeah, Dana took things there. Without making the same mistake as White and talking about people’s situations that I had no direct involvement in, it’s worth mentioning that the recent layoffs at Yahoo! Sports’ boxing and MMA pages had nothing to do with performance. Meltzer and his colleagues at Yahoo! Sports had been kicking everyone’s asses in traffic for years, and still were, when Yahoo! Management decided to change their level of investment in covering combat sports. So, that’s that.
Any way you cut it, it’s a jerk move from White to say something like that just because he doesn’t like a single article of Meltzer’s. But Dave Meltzer is a big boy and fended just fine for himself in responding to White.
Here’s the plain truth – Dana White has a legitimate argument for the UFC on Fox partnership being a success thus far. He is also right that the media has not, on the whole, been giving their readers a well-rounded account of the ratings story (though Meltzer did a better job than anyone else).
But White completely obscures his valid points by surrounding them with childish insults. He’s done this before.
In 2009 Loretta Hunt wrote a pretty poor story on the UFC’s credentialing policies concerning managers, which infuriated White. He could have poked holes in the story and brought up near limitless context and background talking about the history between Hunt, and the UFC on the topic of credentialing specifically, in order to make a case that she might have had an agenda against him. Instead, he vomited out a bunch of ugly misogynistic and homophobic slurs directed at her and others on camera. Guess how many people remembered his points about that story being inaccurate after that? Not many.
BLAF, we love you (and any writer that says they don’t love a quote-factory like Dana White is lying) but chill out. Meltzer had sharp words that obviously hit close to home for you but he didn’t personally insult anyone. He was giving his analysis on a business situation involving the UFC, which is his job.
Of course you disagree with his analysis and are pissed off, so go ahead and make a counter argument, as you did. Just leave the trash out. People might just see things your way more often if you do that.
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.
