News Ratings Report: UFC 261 prelims deliver No. 1 rating for cable Saturday night ( 951,000 viewers adv)

[Kryptt]

When it’s all said and done, UFC 261 will likely go down as one of the biggest cards of the year for the promotion.

On top of reportedly doing 700,000-plus buys on pay-per-view, the UFC 261 prelims also delivered as the No. 1-rated program across all of cable this past Saturday night.

According to the Nielsen Ratings System, the UFC 261 prelims, which aired on ESPN starting at 8 p.m. ET ended up with 951,000 viewers on average with a .36 rating in the coveted 18-49 year old demographic, which was tops for all programming on Saturday.

The UFC event topped a pair of NBA games as well as Top Rank Boxing, which followed the prelims at 10 p.m. ET with that card earning 733,000 viewers on average. The prelims were headlined by Randy Brown pulling of a rare one-arm rear-naked choke to finish Alex Oliveira in the featured bout.

The early prelims, which aired at 6 p.m. ET on ESPN 2, also ended up at No. 5 overall in Saturday cable ratings with 616,000 viewers on average.

All together, the UFC 261 event will be seen as a huge success for the promotion when combining the cable ratings for the prelims along with the pay-per-view buys through ESPN+.

~~~~~

 

[Askren’s chin]

“World fucking domination”- Dana White

 

[Dreyga_King of Sherbums]

UFC is dying bro

 

[Oliver Clothesoff]

It WAS a great card...

 

[iLolAtNutShots]

The best prelims I can ever remember.

 

[Jackonfire]

Damn. Because of how the main card played out, no one has really been talking about Brown's one armed RNC victory over Oleiveira

 

[Willy Knuckles]

Impressive

 

[Krixes]

Pulling better #'s than most cable NBA games this year....

 

[FanofC]

Pulling better #'s than most cable NBA games this year....

Woke vs broke

 

[Krixes]

Woke vs broke

It sucks man, I loved the NBA too...

 

[FanofC]

It sucks man, I loved the NBA too...

Late 80s - early 90s basketball may have been the best era of any sport ever

Such a shame

 

[shunyata]

Damn. Because of how the main card played out, no one has really been talking about Brown's one armed RNC victory over Oleiveira

Or that vicious ankle lock with 5 sec left of the first round.

 

[Eiger]

People who complain about no-names on cards, cards being watered down, and the roster being inundated with subpar CANtender Series fighters are going to be discouraged by this news. UFC can do well with lesser known talent.

 

[rorschach51]

Everyone in the world at this point knows what the UFC is at the very least, I would have thought by now (16 years after the initial boom) the ratings on cable would be doing better than that. But then again I guess a lot more people don't really watch cable TV at all.

 

[Osiris3657]

Bellator shills right now...

They won't say a word, but if the ratings were poor they'd be infesting this thread with their shitposting

 

[rorschach51]

Woke vs broke

Please excuse a old man, but I don't get what you mean. Are you saying the NBA is broke? How is that possible?

 

[Sakurabaism]

It was a great prelims. Plenty of exciting fights and JBG moments with a great submission win to top it off.

 

[FanofC]

Please excuse a old man, but I don't get what you mean. Are you saying the NBA is broke? How is that possible?

They're not broke but their ratings are getting progressively worse because of their attachment to leftist woke politics

 

[CashMoney1991]

They're not broke but their ratings are getting progressively worse because of their attachment to leftist woke politics

As much as I don't like Dana he is smart from a business angle not to get his brand involved in anything political, he does let the fighters express themselves politically such as Colby for instance, but whenever I watch UFC, there's not a single political commercial, no national anthem, etc. and I think that's what turns people on cus every other sport has all of those things, wouldn't surprise me if the UFC kept getting bigger

 

[Stan]

Sometimes you need to read between the lines to find the truth in stories. How has the UFC cable ratings all of a sudden just started shooting upward? The truth is they have not shot up at all if you were to deduct "Streaming Services" numbers from the cable ratings. Yes ESPN Plus Streaming Services have been added to the cable ratings numbers while just about all of the other cable channels do not.