The ratings are in for Saturday night’s ‘UFC Fight Night 36’ event and show that an average of 1.4 million viewers tuned into the main card live on FOX Sports 1.
That’s an excellent rating for the UFC, marking it out as the second most watched ‘UFC Fight Night’ event on the network to date, and indeed only the second to breach the 1 million barrier on FS1.
‘UFC Fight Night 26: Sonnen Vs Shogun’, which aired during the channel’s opening night, still rules the roost with 1.74 million viewers though, while the prelims for UFC 168 at the tail-end of last year also pulled a strong 1.5 million viewers.
Alas, it wasn’t Lyoto Machida’s star power that drove the ratings for Saturday’s event though. Instead it appears that the UFC show benefited from following directly after a NASCAR event that drew a whopping 3.5 million viewers – the highest rating for any program on FOX Sports 1 so far.
It’d have been nice if the UFC event could have reached that number under it’s own steam, but at the same time it is good to see other sports driving viewers to the channel as so far it’s MMA’s leading promotion that’s been doing most of the heavy lifting for the channel since it’s launch back in August of last year.
