The UFC On FOX 23 event in Denver, Colorado this past Saturday night drew an average of 2,189,000 viewers.
That leaves the event with the dubious distinction of having the second least viewership to date for the UFC on ‘big’ FOX’.
There were a couple of main reasons for this. The first was just a technicality: the main card featured a series of relatively quick finishes and so was wrapped up by 10pm ET, which hurt the ratings as they tend to rise if the event goes on past that time.
However, the biggest reason for the underwhelming ratings was simply that the headlining match-up between Valentina Shevchenko and Julianna Pena just simply didn’t have a whole lot of buzz leading into the event.
Female main events have generally been successful for the ‘UFC On FOX’ series in the past year, with UFC On FOX 20: Holm Vs Shevchenko and UFC On FOX 22: Paige Van Zant Vs Michele Waterson both having pulled strong numbers, but judging by Saturday night’s show it doesn’t guarantee that people will tune in.
Nevertheless, Shevchenko Vs Pena did peak with just over 3 million viewers, while earlier in the evening the UFC On FOX 23 prelims did an average of 619,000 on FOX Sports 1.
