UFC 208 Prelims Bring In LOW Numbers
With the lack of buzz going into UFC 208, it no doubt affected fans choosing to tune in and watch the event. The viewership numbers for the event are in. The prelims, which were headlined by Belal Muhammad and Randy Brown, drew 874,000, which is down from 1,511 million viewers that UFC 207 drew.
UFC 208 took place on February 11, 2017, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The UFC Fight Pass prelims started at 7:30 p.m. ET while the FOX Sports 1 prelims started at 8 p.m. ET. The main card kicked off on PPV at 10 p.m. ET.
The pre-fight show drew 259,000 viewers while the post-fight show did 207,000 viewers. The weigh-in show didn’t crack the top 150 shows on Friday, which is not a good sign. With the post-fight show not doing good numbers is a bad sign for PPV buys as that meant that a lot of people were not interested enough to hang out and catch the results/highlights of the actual PPV main card after the event aired. Usually when a PPV event does a good/great PPV buy rate, then the prelims and the post-fight show does good viewership numbers.
The event was headlined by the inaugural UFC Women’s Featherweight Championship bout between former UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Holly Holm and Germaine de Randamie. Anderson Silva vs. Derek Brunson in a middleweight bout served as the co-main event. Rounding out the main card was Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza vs. Tim Boetsch in a middleweight bout, Glover Teixeira vs. Jared Cannonier in a light heavyweight bout and Dustin Poirier vs. Jim Miller in a lightweight bout.
The UFC returns to FOX Sports 1 this weekend with UFC Fight Night 105 on Sunday, February 19, 2017, at Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The main event will be a heavyweight matchup between Derrick Lewis and Travis Browne.
