In a blast from the past, UFC 211’s prelims on Saturday night were aired on the FX channel rather than FOX Sports 1, and that led to an average of 1,148,000 million viewers tuning in.
You’d have to go back as far as UFC 188 in June of 2015 to find the last time PPV prelims aired on the FX Channel, and on that occasion they only delivered 727,000 viewers, while going even further back, UFC 154’s prelims in November of 2012 did 980,000 viewers.
Saturday’s show on FX also compares favorably to recent outings on FS1, with UFC 210 having delivered a disappointing 723,000 viewers, while UFC 209 did 1,033,000 viewers.
It’s not too surprising that UFC 211’s prelims did fairly well given that the action included a quality lightweight match-up between former champion Eddie Alvarez and Dustin Poirier, and that was proceeding what was on paper the strongest pay-per-view line-up of the year so far.
Meanwhile, the UFC 211 pre-fight show did 522,000 on FX, while the post-fight offering drew 329,000 viewers.
After an underwhelming first quarter of 2017, this past weekend’s UFC 211 event in Dallas, Texas definitely felt like the promotion was starting to get back on track, though it remains to be seen whether that will translate into respectable pay-per-view sales.
