This past Saturday night the UFC held its FuelTV 7 event which featured Renan Barao retaining his interim bantamweight title via fourth round submission over Michael McDonald in London at the Wembley Arena.
According to industry sources and Nielsen, the Fuel TV 7 live (3PM EST) preliminary ratings number came in at the fourth highest ever for a Fuel TV card with a reach of 195k viewers. The replay (8PM EST), which in previous events has done much better, was actually down to 116k viewers.
However, it should also be noted that this Fuel TV 7 live telecast actually broke the average for the non-prime time live events which was at 148k for the four total non-primetime Fuel TV cards.
Saturday night also featured some heavy national network competition from Fox as Nascar returned to the airwaves with a huge 5.16 million viewers and a 4 share of the 18-49 adult demographic. CBS also did quote well with back-to-back repeats of Person of Interest and Criminal Minds that both eclipsed 4 million viewers with 2 shares of the 18-49 adult demographics.
Anyway, the live number for FuelTV actually exceeded my estimate of 180k from earlier in the week and the UFC should be proud as they bounced back from an abysmal live number for FuelTV 6 which was only at 88k viewers.
Stay with TheMMAReport.com for ongoing coverage of the Nielsen ratings battle between Bellator MMA and the UFC.