Saturday night’s UFC Fight Night 98 event in Mexico City was watched by an average of 860,000 viewers on FOX Sports 1.
That’s slightly down on the ‘UFC Fight Night’ average so far this year, but it’s a significant step up from the last show, UFC Fight Night 96 a few weeks ago, which only drew 657,000 viewers.
By contrast, even UFC Fight Night 98’s main prelim between Erik Perez and Felipe Arantes managed to outdo that, delivering 668,000 viewers.
Interestingly, the event peaked with 997,000 viewers during the first event of the main card, which saw Alexa Grasso make a successful UFC debut against Heather Jo Clark, suggesting that she could be a potential star in the making for the promotion.
As for the main event between Tony Ferguson and Rafael dos Anjos, it started later than usual due to the fact this was a six-fight card, which hurt it’s ratings potential.
Meanwhile Bellator 163 produced an underwhelming 507,000 viewers the night before on Spike TV.
That’s sure to be a disappointment for the promotion given that they had led the card with a light-heavyweight title fight that saw one of their biggest acquisitions in recent times, Phil Davis defeat the champion Liam McGeary.
Bellator’s roster has never looked stronger, with the likes of Chael Sonnen, Rory MacDonald and Ben Henderson also on-board, but while they can deliver good numbers occasionally for fights like Kimbo Slice Vs Ken Shamrock or potentially the upcoming Sonnen Vs Tito Ortiz match-up, they are still struggling to get people to consistently tune in on a more regular basis.
