Spike TV packed their TV schedule on Wednesday night with both Bellator 97 and their ‘Fight Master’ reality show which, along with a major announcement, helped boost the ratings.
First up, the Bellator 97 show produced an average of 679,000 viewers and peaked at 856,000 during the announcement that Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson woud be fighting Tito Ortiz in the promotion’s first ever pay-per-view event in November.
Clearly some of those extra viewers stuck around because the ‘Fight Master’ show which followed afterwards produced an increase in ratings to 629,000 viewers, up 188,000 from the previous week.
Spike TV and Bellator will no doubt be relieved that the ratings were an improvement on the last time they paired a live event with the season premiere of ‘Fight Master’ to surprisingly low audience with neither able to rise above the 500,000 mark.
Having said that, Wednesday’s offering wasn’t exactly a home run.
Despite pulling out the big guns with Bellator champions Michael Chandler and Ben Askren defending their titles, Muhammed ‘King Mo’ Lawal on the main card and the heavily publicized ‘big announcement’ the live event failed to keep up with the numbers they were able to pull with their debut season on the channel earlier this year, and in fact is their second lowest rated show so far.
And while ‘Fight Master’ enjoyed a better night, it didn’t top the 676,000 viewers it had pulled for the season’s third episode a few weeks ago.
So, all-in-all the results are a bit of a mixed bag. The good news is that all the big stars on the show picked up solid victories and hopefully will have made those who were watching more interested in seeing them perform again in the future.
We’ll find out what kind of an impact this all really had next week when ‘Fight Master’ flies solo again without the help of a live show or pre-event hype.
