Viewership Drops For UFC 223 Prelims

It’s time to look at how the viewership for the UFC 223 prelims did on network television.

The ratings have come out, and the prelims for the show pulled in 892,000 viewers on FOX Sports 1.

By looking at these numbers, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise due to some fights falling out due to Conor McGregor’s bus incident, which had to go head-to-head with the Oklahoma City vs. Houston game that did 2,673,000 viewers on ABC.

The show peaked during the main event of the prelims that saw Karolina Kowalkiewicz pick up a decision win over Felice Herrig with 1,057,000 viewers. The show beat the average for pay-per-view prelims in 2017 of 834,000.

The latest PPV prelims on FOX Sports 1 was UFC 222, which drew 905,000 viewers. The rest of the PPV prelims that have taken place this year was UFC 221 that did 697,000 viewers as well as UFC 220, which 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.

The pre-fight show pulled in 373,000 viewers, the weigh-ins broadcast pulled in 47,000 viewers live on FS2 and on FS1 at 9 p.m. did 128,000 viewers. Finally, the post-fight show did 138,000.

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

UFC 222 – 905,000

UFC 223 – 892,000