The ratings are in for Thursday night’s Bellator 88 event and show that an average of 807,000 viewers tuned in on Spike TV.
That’s up 102,000 viewers from the previous weeks event, while the key 18-49 male demographic was also up to a 0.7, the best so far for the season.
The event also drew an additional 268,000 viewers for the replay later the same night, down 55,000 viewers from last week’s re-run.
Overall this was a good result for Bellator, arresting the downward trend of the past couple of weeks, perhaps thanks to being headlined by a middleweight title fight between Alexander Shlemenko and Maiquel Falcao, whereas Bellator 87, which has the lowest ratings of the season so far, is the only event so far not to have had a belt on the line.
If Bellator’s ratings can now level out around the 700-900,000 range depending on the quality of the fight card then that would be a good start for them on Spike.
It’s lower than the UFC achieved, but it’s still an audience several times larger than they’ve ever achieved in the past and is outdoing what the likes of Strikeforce and WEC were able to draw on a consistent basis during their runs on Showtime and Versus respectively.
Better still, as people become more familiar with the promotion’s stars and things like the newly announced ‘Fight Master’ reality show kick in there’s going to be a real opportunity to gradually build their audience from this base level.
It’s still relatively early in the season though, so let’s see how things progress in the coming weeks.
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Bellator Ratings On Spike TV So Far:
Bellator 85: 938,000 Viewers
Bellator 86: 812,000
Bellator 87: 705,000
Bellator 88: 807,000