Tag: UFC prelims ratings

UFC 257 prelims top Saturday cable ratings

Posted on by Paul Fontaine

Image: UFC

Saturday’s UFC 257 prelims, which aired on ESPN prior to the pay-per-view event, averaged 1.433 million viewers.

The prelims drew a 0.54 rating in the 18-49 demo, which topped all of cable television in that category. It also beat everything on network television for the day with the exception of ABC’s World News Tonight. 

The UFC 257 PPV was headlined by Dustin Poirier’s second-round knockout of Conor McGregor. Early reports are that the PPV did 1.2 million buys domestically and 1.6 million buys in total.

Saturday was the first time ESPN had aired a PPV prelims block since UFC 252 in August of last year. That show averaged 943,000 viewers leading into the PPV that was headlined by Stipe Miocic vs. Daniel Cormier, which did 500,000 PPV buys.

Here are the viewership totals for the other UFC PPV prelims that aired on ESPN in 2020:

  • UFC 251 — 1,000,000 viewers (July 11)
  • UFC 250 — 950,000 viewers (June 6)
  • UFC 249 — 1,470,000 viewers (May 9)
  • UFC 248 — 1,190,000 viewers (March 7)
  • UFC 247 — 1,480,000 viewers (February 8)
  • UFC 246 — 1,770,000 viewers (January 18)

The UFC 246 PPV was headlined by McGregor vs. Donald Cerrone and did just over 1.35 million buys on PPV. It’s unusual — but not unprecedented — that more people will buy the PPV than tune in for the prelims. UFC 257 did not have anything at all in terms of marquee value on the prelims, with the featured prelim being a fight that was put together the day before the show between Matt Frevola facing Arman Tsarukyan. 

A comparable event to this show would be UFC 202, headlined by the rematch between McGregor and Nate Diaz. That PPV reportedly drew a similar number of buys as UFC 257, and the prelims — which aired on FS1 at the time — averaged 1.3 million viewers. But that prelims show was headlined by Cody Garbrandt, who has way more name value than anyone who fought on this weekend’s prelims. 

UFC 202 prelims do 1.3 million viewers Saturday on FS1

Posted on by Paul Fontaine

The UFC 202 prelims on Saturday night did an average of 1.3 million viewers for the four fights on FS 1 from 8-10 p.m. ET. That was down 30% from the 1.84 million the UFC 196 prelims did in March, the last time Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz faced each other in the main event.

That would seem to be an indication that the pay-per-view number for this show might be down from the record 1.6 million buys that their first fight did, but there are extenuating factors here that may mean that is not necessarily the case.

First off, this show was up against the Summer Olympics, which did 15 million viewers during prime time. Because the PPV started at 10 p.m. ET with the main event not starting until about 11:30, it’s possible that people would’ve ordered the PPV but not even watched the prelims, similar to a boxing audience.

The prelims were also up against NXT TakeOver on the WWE Network, and with a big UFC show there is usually crossover with a pro wrestling audience. The NXT show ended right around the time the second PPV match was underway.

As reported by Dave Meltzer on Sunday, the UFC show had over five million Google searches as of Sunday afternoon, which would be indicative of another huge PPV buy number.