Following up last weeks really good rating The Ultimate Fighter looked to continue its good luck with an episode that featured Kelvin Gastelum defeating Colin Hart and Dylan Andrews defeating Luke Barnatt.
Unfortunately, according to Nielsen sources, the tenth episode of The Ultimate Fighter 17 ended up being the lowest rated episode of the entire season.
The show finished with a preliminary rating of 1.09 million viewers and a meager 0.6 in the 18-49 adult demographic. That 1.09 is roughly 20% lower than last weeks impressive number.
Now, at the surface, it would seem like maybe The Ultimate Fighter did not receive a strong lead-in but that was not the case like last week. The lead-in was another FX movie, Ironman 2, which scored a very solid 1.45 million viewers. Justified, which has been really solid all season long, came in at its usual 2.44 million viewers and a 0.8 in the adult demographic. Safe to say, the FX lost viewers when The Ultimate Fighter came on and regained viewers when Justified came back on. Not a good sign heading into next week.
When it came to the competition from the national networks in the 9 p.m. time-slot the UFC went up against NCIS: Los Angeles on CBS which fell a little bit from last week landing at 14.32 million viewers and a 2.3 18-49 adult demographic (7 share). ABC’s Dancing With The Stars also drew a solid 13.07 million viewers and a 2.3 18-49 adult demographic (6 share).
On the cable side of things at 9 p.m. time-slot the UFC lost out again against TBS’s The Big Bang Theory, History Channels Top Gear, SyFy’s FaceOff and TruTv’s Hardcore Pawn. Out of those four, The Big Bang Theory once again ruled the time-slot with a huge 3.26 and 3.27 million viewers during the 9 p.m. – 10 p.m. hour. The other shows all garnered over 1.75 million viewers once again beating out the UFC.
The UFC also partially went up against the USA vs Mexico World Cup Qualifier on ESPN which drew a tremendous preliminary number of 2.39 million viewers. As of right now, that is a record for ESPN, but again it is a preliminary number so that could change a little bit. Nevertheless, this is now two-weeks-in-a-row that the UFC has gotten hit with some unrelated sports competition.