Bellator put on its fourth live show on Spike TV last night with a grouping of featherweight tournament quarterfinal bouts and a middleweight title fight main event that saw Alexander Shlemenko grab the gold against Maiquel Falcao via KO.
This weeks Bellator 88 ratings number was arguably helped by the news of Bellator’s new reality series staring Randy Couture, Frank Shamrock, Greg Jackson and Joe Warren as the fight card once again cracked the Nielsen top 100 cable shows.
The shows preliminary number landed about 807k total viewers marking an increase of 14% from last weeks show and a 0.4 in the 18-49 adult demographic. The pivotal male demographic number was once again the highest of the season with a 0.7 and a 0.64 HH.
The normal lead-in show for Bellator, Impact Wrestling, did a slightly lower number than normal landing at 1.412 million viewers with a 0.4 in the 18-49 adult demographic. The show saw both Sting and Bully Ray (WWE’s Bubba Ray Dudley) defeating the Aces & Eights in the main-event and Bobby Roode & Austin Aries being crowned new tag-team champions in.
For the rest of the competition last night Bellator was again up against MTV’s season one finale of Buckwild which outperformed everyone with 2.7 million viewers and a 1.5 in the adult 18-49 demographic. It was also up against a huge NBA on TNT matchup against the Celtics and Lakers which pulled a 2.6 million viewers and a 1.1 in the adult 18-49 demographic.
I will have an updated Bellator ratings chart once the live+3 information becomes available.
Bellator Season 8 Ratings History:
Bellator 85 – 985k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 86 – 877k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 87 – 774k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 88 – 807k (w/out DVR)