Tag: bellator ratings

WWE & MMA ratings delayed due to President’s Day

Posted on by Dave Meltzer

Due to President’s Day, all of the ratings are delayed.

Ratings for Raw last night, UFC on Sunday, and Bellator on Saturday should all be available tomorrow.

Raw was coming off the lowest rated episode in more than 20 years that wasn’t on either a holiday or against a major sporting event. The show was built around Braun Strowman vs. Big Show in the main event, which got over well with the live crowd, as well as controversy regarding the Women’s title.

UFC had Derrick Lewis vs. Travis Browne and Johny Hendricks vs. Hector Lombard. UFC has done well in the past on Sunday nights. It was also on one hour earlier than usual, which should be a plus for the main card since the main event ended at around midnight instead of after 1 a.m., as is often the case on Saturdays.

Bellator ran Saturday instead of Friday, because the company feels if they run a West Coast date, that TV going on the air at 6 p.m. on a Friday Pacific time and the show starting a few hours earlier with prelims, that it’s tougher to sell on Fridays. It also had competition from boxing, which it doesn’t have with its Friday night shows. But the most recent Saturday night show, headlined by Chael Sonnen vs. Tito Ortiz, did the third largest numbers in company history.

Bellator was from San Jose and was expecting a strong rating due to Fedor Emelianenko fighting in the main event. But with the last minute pullout, that will no doubt hurt the numbers.

Bellator 170 does big numbers for Tito Ortiz vs. Chael Sonnen

Posted on by Paul Fontaine

Bellator MMA had its third biggest TV audience in history on Saturday night for Bellator 170, which featured Tito Ortiz scoring a first round submission victory in the final fight of his career over the debuting Chael Sonnen.

The show averaged 1.374 million viewers on Spike TV, peaking at 1.85 million for the Ortiz vs. Sonnen main event.

Saturday was the biggest audience for Bellator since last February’s show that featured a double main event of Royce Gracie vs. Ken Shamrock and Kimbo Slice vs. Dada 5000, which set the company record at 1.964 million.

The only other Bellator show aside from that to beat Saturday’s mark was the Kimbo Slice vs. Ken Shamrock fight in June 2015, which did 1.58 million viewers. The fourth biggest Bellator rating in company history was also an Ortiz fight, his November 2014 bout with Stephan Bonnar that had an audience of 1.24 million.

There was no big sports competition on cable, which no doubt helped the rating, and the show finished second for the night in the 18-49 demo with a 0.55 rating. It was first in the male 18-49 demo on all of cable.

Bellator is back on Spike TV this Friday with Bellator 171, headlined by former UFC fighter Melvin Guillard making his welterweight debut against Chidi Njokuani.