Bellator 148 took place on Friday night at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California and the card was headlined by Paul Daley scoring a knockout victory in the first round against Andy Uhrich.
According to Nielson sources, Bellator 148’s preliminary live average viewership landed at 566,000 viewers and the viewership is down 13 percent from last month’s Bellator 147 (656,000).
When it came to the sports competition on Friday night, the Bellator fight card went up against the X Games on ESPN and a NBA game on NBA TV. The X Games broadcast averaged 544,000 viewers (7-11 p.m. ET) and the NBA game between the Houston Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder (8-10:30 p.m. ET) came in with an average audience of 466,000 viewers.
The positive news for the Bellator ratings on Friday night is the fact that it drew a higher average audience than the sports programming I mentioned above. However, there is some bad news when it comes to the overall viewership of Bellator this past Friday night. The live viewership of 566,000 is down 26 percent from last January’s Bellator card on Spike (767,000 – Pitbull vs. Straus II) and this is the first time since Bellator 144 that the promotion had an average audience under 600,000 viewers.
The peak viewership and +3 DVR ratings will be out later this week and Bellator will return to Spike TV on February 19 for Bellator 149. This will be the first tent pole event of 2016 and will be headlined by a trilogy bout between Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie.