Bellator put on its first Summer Series event of the Spike TV era last night which featured King Mo delivering a one-punch knockout to Seth Petruzelli to advance to the finals of the Bellator light heavyweight tournament.
Following the broadcast of Bellator 96, Spike TV offered up the first episode of the reality show Fight Master. I like to describe the new show as The Ultimate Fighter meets The Voice. The episode featured a collection of entry fights with the winners of the fights getting to pick a coach.
According to a Nielsen source, Bellator 96’s preliminary number did not crack the Nielsen top-100 cable shows for the night and was the lowest rated Bellator on Spike TV ever.
The event garnered a very low 480k total viewers, and contrary to what other sites have reported, the event did not crack 0.4 in the key adult 18-49 demographic. This was certainly not a number that Bellator and Spike TV executives were hoping for.
On the flip side, the same Nielsen source has confirmed Fight Master’s preliminary number landed a little lower at 432k total viewers and also failed to crack at least 0.4 in the adult 18-49 key demographic. Again, not exactly stellar, but reality shows take time for ratings to develop so this show gets a pass for this week.
When it came to the nights biggest competition that came from the NHL. The NHL offered up game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Bruins and Blackhawks that was concluded in overtime. The overnight ratings for the game landed at 6.64 million overall viewers and 2.4 in the adult 18-49 demographic, winning the night on both national and cable.
It is hard to ignore this huge number by the NHL as it clearly impacted Bellator. Then again, the NBA Finals between the Spurs and Heat would have been even higher, so thankfully Bellator got the lesser of two evils.
Now, there has also been lots of talk about Bellator’s lack of an Impact Wrestling lead-in. Obviously, that lead-in has to count for something, but something that cannot be ignored, that people seem to be avoiding, is Bellator’s lack of marketing and planning for this Summer Series opener which is a huge piece of the puzzle.
Remember, Bellator and Spike TV have been off of television for weeks. Not to mention, they moved not only time slots but days of the week. For those of you who follows television ratings know, that once you move a television show it takes time for people to move. Just look at the UFC and how long it has taken them to train fans to turn on Fuel TV.
Again, the point here is, this number is terrible for some many expected reasons. NHL competition being the highest in 20 years, check. Shift from late-night to primetime, check. Shift from Thursday to Wednesday, check. Shift from Impact Wrestling lead-in to Bellator 360 (repeats) lead-in, check.
Safe to say, if the next Summer Series card does not deliver in ratings, which there is no-competition on that particular Wednesday, it is going to be a very tough night for Bellator, Spike TV executives and advertisers for sure.
I will have an updated Bellator ratings chart once the live+3 information becomes available. So as always, stay tuned for more ratings analysis on TheMMAReport.com