UFC Brooklyn Prelims Do Solid Numbers On ESPN

Last weekend’s (Sat., January 19, 2019) UFC on ESPN+ 1 from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, was the UFC’s first event of their new deal with sports giant ESPN.

It looks like the preliminary card portion airing on ESPN brought in some solid numbers as a result. ESPN’s Brett Okamoto reported that the prelims averaged 2.08 million viewers:

Per UFC, Saturday's UFC prelims on ESPN averaged 2.08 million viewers. Viewership was 29 percent female. Earlier this week, ESPN announced the prelims logged a 1.4 metered rating. That's the same rating Lomachenko did last month, for comparison.

— Brett Okamoto (@bokamotoESPN) January 23, 2019

In another report from MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer, the card reportedly drew 1,956,000 viewers. That number would be the record for the highest-viewed Fight Night preliminary card in UFC history. The previous record for Fight Night prelims was 1,757,000 viewers for the bouts preceding January 2016’s Dominick Cruz vs. TJ Dillashaw bantamweight title bout.

The UFC Brooklyn preliminary card featured Donald Cerrone’s thrilling knockout victory over formerly surging lightweight Alexander Hernandez. Buoyed by the impressive win from “Cowboy,” the prelims did a comparable number to December’s Lomachenko boxing match by comparison.

On Sunday, news came that ESPN+, the network’s streaming service, signed up 525,000 new customers due in large to the card airing on the service. The UFC will now ramp up their coverage on ESPN and ESPN+ in 2019. A full slate of events is scheduled for the coming months.

One of the biggest scheduled cards is February’s UFC on ESPN 1. The event features Cain Velasquez vs. Francis Ngannou in the main event from Phoenix, Arizona.