Bellator put on its ninth live show on Spike TV last night which featured Dave Jansen winning the season eight lightweight tournament from an absolutely packed Androscoggin Colisee in Lewiston, Maine.
Bellator was also coming off a spring-break and also going head-to-head with a series of 2013 NCAA Basketball tournament first round games on the CBS family of networks which did record numbers.
According to Nielsen and Spike TV, Bellator 93’s preliminary number came in at a reasonable 748k total viewers.
Between the live (748k) and replay (394k) numbers of last night’s fight card, the cume number landed at 1,142,000 total viewers.
The normal lead-in show for Bellator, Impact Wrestling, which was down last week, was once again down to 1.387 million viewers and a 0.5 in the adult 18-49 demographic. The show featured a series of much anticipated Bully Ray reveals on how he planned the entire Aces & Eights takeover of TNA Wrestling.
When it came to the head-to-head match-up with the 2013 NCAA Basketball tournament first round games, the NCAA scored with its highest ratings in nearly 22 years. Most important for Bellator, was the NCAA’s 9:30 p.m. to 12:45 a.m games which averaged a massive 6.4 million viewers with 11 shares across all CBS networks. The TNT competition at 10:00 p.m. did a 2.4 million viewers with a 0.9 in the adult 18-49 demographic. The 7:00 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. games drew even higher landing at 7.4 million viewers and a 14 share. Safe to say, this was a bad night for any of male demographic dominated programs.
When it came to the other cable networks at 10p.m. History Channel’s Big Rig Bounty Hunters, FX’s Archer and MTV’s Ridiculousness once again reigned supreme in the time-slot war. Big Rig Bounty Hunters landed at 2.4 million viewers, while both Archer and Ridiculousness both landed about 20% lower than the prior week hitting 1.3 and 1.5 million viewers, respectfully.
All in all, Bellator should be proud of the overall audience turn-out this week as not a lot of people expected the number to be over 700k. Also, for those who are wondering about the male and adult demographic numbers, they are far below any average, but again expected with the increased competition by the NCAA.
I will have an updated Bellator ratings chart once the live+3 information becomes available next Tuesday.
Bellator Season 8 Ratings History:
Bellator 85 – 985k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 86 – 877k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 87 – 774k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 88 – 863k (w/DVR)
Bellator 89 – 773k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 90 – 791k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 91 – 978k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 92 – 797k (w/ DVR)
Bellator 93 – 748k (w/out DVR)