UFC 197 took place this past weekend at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada and the televised preliminary card on FS1 featured former UFC women’s strawweight champion Carla Esparza scoring a decision victory against Juliana Lima.
According to Nielson sources, the two hour televised preliminary card on the sports cable network drew 835,000 viewers and this number is up 18 percent from last year’s April UFC 186 pay-per-view preliminary card (835,000 vs. 710,000). Also, Saturday’s preliminary card was up 19 percent in the Adult 18-49 demographic (436,000 vs. 365,000) from the UFC 186 card last year.
Following the pay-per-view that was headlined by Jon Jones winning the interim UFC light heavyweight title with a decision victory over Ovince Saint Preux, the post fight show aired on FS1 and this was also an increase from last April’s UFC 186. The post fight show on Saturday averaged 218,000 viewers, which is a 60 percent increase from the post fight viewership for UFC 186 (136,000). In addition, the viewership from Saturday was up 14 percent in the Adult 18-49 demographic from UFC 186 (106,000 vs. 93,000).
The UFC will return to FS1 next Sunday, May 8 for UFC Fight Night 87: Overeem vs. Arlovski. The coverage of the fight card will begin with the televised preliminary card at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT and the six fight main card on FS1 will begin at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT.