Viewership Drops For UFC 221 Prelims

It’s time to look at how the viewership for the UFC 221 prelims did on network television.

The ratings have come out, and the prelims for the show pulled in 697,000 viewers on FOX Sports 1.

Also, the prelims did 8,022 streaming viewers on FSGO and FOX Now over an average minute.

By looking at these numbers, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise due to the lackluster names on the card, which had to go head-to-head with the Winter Olympics on NBC that drew 21,394,000 viewers with figure skating, ice dancing, and men’s alpine skiing.

This show ranked fourth among sports broadcasts in the time slot as they were behind the NBA game that saw Golden State Warriors vs. San Antonio Spurs draw 781,000 viewers and college basketball on ESPN that did 1,308,000 viewers.

The latest PPV prelims on FOX Sports 1 was UFC 220 and featured a better card that was headlined by Stipe Miocic successfully retaining his heavyweight strap against Francis Ngannou in the main event. Those prelims did 905,000 viewers.

There was only four PPV prelim shows last year that pulled in a lower number than UFC 221’s show did.

The prelims peaked with 821,000 viewers for the Dong Hyun Kim vs. Damien Brown fight.

It should be noted that most of the pre-fight show, who drew 36,000 viewers, was moved to FOX Sports 2 due to an ARCA race at Daytona Motor Speedway. The post-fight show did 188,000 viewers.

Here are the average viewership numbers for UFC PPV preliminary cards over the last year:

UFC 208 – 874,000

UFC 209 – 1,033,000

UFC 210 – 723,000

UFC 211 – 1,148,000

UFC 212 – 732,000

UFC 213 – 657,000

UFC 214 – 886,000

UFC 215 – 418,000

UFC 216 – 653,000

UFC 217 – 1,276,000

UFC 218 – 694,000

UFC 219 – 914,000

UFC 220 – 905,000

UFC 221 697,000