It was a busy weekend for the UFC with two events in two nights at the same location in Las Vegas as part of their International Fight Week festivities and both the live UFC 175 prelims and TUF 19 Finale proved to be a solid draw on FOX Sports 1.
On Saturday night the UFC 175 prelims drew an average of 1 million viewers, the second best rating for a UFC pay-per-view undercard on FOX Sports 1 to date.
The ratings were no doubt bolstered by a general rise in interest levels for UFC 175, one of the biggest fight cards of the year, and the fact that Urijah Faber was “headlining” the preliminary section of the show will also have helped.
Despite that, there wasn’t the same level of buzz on Saturday night as there was for UFC 168 back in December when Chris Weidman took on Anderson Silva for a second time which had led to the preliminary card for that one delivering an impressive 1.5 million viewers.
Meanwhile, on Sunday night the TUF 19 Finale event also drew an average of 1 million viewers on the same channel, with the prelims getting 744,000 viewers.
There’s absolutely no doubt that fans here were tuning in for the headliner here – a third encounter between Frankie Edgar and BJ Penn – as really there was no-one else of any note on the card and the TUF 19 show had drawn extremely poor ratings all season long.
So, also considering that this aired on an unfamiliar Sunday night slot and was the second show in two days this would appear to be another solid rating for the promotion.
