Saturday night’s Bellator 170 event drew an average of 1.4 million viewers on Spike TV.
The event peaked with 1.85 million viewers during the main event between former UFC stars Tito Ortiz and Chael Sonnen.
That high-profile headliner had been expected to deliver strong ratings for Bellator, and that’s exactly how it panned out, giving the promotion their best ratings on Spike TV since February of 2016.
It fell some way short of being a record-breaker though, with Bellator 149: Shamrock Vs Gracie having delivered an average of almost 2 million viewers, peaking with an impressive 2.7 million during the co-main event between Kimbo Slice and Dada 5000.
Bellator 139: Kimbo Vs Shamrock also posted higher numbers, drawing an average of 1.6 million viewers and a peak of 2.1 million.
Nevertheless, there was plenty to cheer about at Bellator HQ after Saturday’s show, including the fact that the prelims drew the second highest numbers on Bellator.com and their mobile app to date, while the post-fight press conference had the most concurrent YouTube viewers in Bellator history and #bellator170 was the top trending topic on Twitter during the show.
On the downside, this was Ortiz’s retirement fight and Sonnen’s stock took a hit with his surprisingly swift submission loss.
That being said, if Bellator boss Scott Coker can match Sonnen up with his bitter rival Wanderlei Silva then that’s a fight that would still generate a lot of pre-fight headlines and draw good numbers on Spike TV.
