UFC Fight Night 58 Ratings Show Significant Increase In Viewership For FOX Sports 1
In a year where more high-profile title fights were canceled than actually contested, the UFC’s profits are down by as much as 40 percent.
There’s been precious little good news about viewership as a whole, but it appears that unfortunate trend didn’t continue with last Saturday night’s (December 20, 2014) UFC Fight Night 58 from Jose Correa Gymnasium in Barueri, Brazil.
The event, which featured Lyoto Machida’s devastating 62-second finish of C.B. Dollaway in the main event (watch highlights here) drew a reported average of 955,000 viewers according to MMA Weekly, a very solid 28 percent increase over the similar FOX Sports 1-aired event from the same time last year.
In December 2013, Mark Hunt fought Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva to a bloody draw in their now-classic heavyweight slugfest at UFC Fight Night 33. By comparison, that event from Australia drew an average of 755,000 viewers.
The UFC has been a large part of FOX Sports 1’s steady expansion into sports media, a direct byproduct of the promotion’s large television contract with news giant FOX.
The strong fight viewership is also apparently helping FOX Sports 1’s flagship news program “FOX Sports Live,” as the post-fight numbers from the show increased from 12,000 in December 2013 to 325,000 last week.
In an era when the UFC is highly criticized for oversaturating the market, the numbers that the strong but not amazing UFC Fight Night 58 put up should encourage them. It featured the returns of two formed champions who lost title bots in their last fights; however, not a common occurrence for your standard UFC Fight Night.
Was that the main cause of UFC Fight Night 58’s strong performance, or is the UFC finally bouncing back after a dark and dreary 2014?
Photo Credit: Jason Silva for USA TODAY Sports
