UFC on Fox 8 took place last night in prime time on Fox from Seattle’s Key Arena and featured Demetrious Johnson successfully defending his flyweight title against John Moraga.
According to Nielsen, the events preliminary rating landed as the lowest UFC on Fox card ever hitting only 2.04 million viewers, but lead the night with a 0.9 in the 18-49 adult demographic.
Both preliminary numbers and 18-49 adult demographic numbers show a 40% decrease in viewership from UFC on Fox 7 and over a 50% decrease from UFC on Fox 6. Although, it should be noted that this preliminary number is merely and average and it will go up, especially with the overrun over at 10 P.M.
When it came to the nights competition, the UFC beat out the rest in the adult 18-49 demographic but lost out to a repeat of 48 Hours and a running of the move The Longest Yard. Both shows garnered well over 2.7 million viewers. Again, I need to stress that for advertisers and executives the demographic win is the one that really matters, but having such an incredible drop-off the last 3 consecutive Fox cards clearly shows why the UFC wont be back on Fox until the end of the College Football season.
Now, I also want to bring MLB on Fox into the mix a little bit here. Over the past couple of weeks, MLB has really struggled to capture the market, but has still outpaced the UFC.
For instance, on July 6th, a regional game between the Braves and Phillies earned a 1.9 final rating with over 2.9 million viewers. A few weeks later, Fox hit its highest mark of the year thanks to a Red Sox versus Yankees game, although the AL East market is huge for Fox, so that shouldn’t be a surprise.
What should come as a surprise to Fox is that it has only over a 2.0 rating 4 times so far this year. Three out of those four times, it was always the Yankees versus an AL East opponent. The long single was a Rangers and Cardinals game.
Once again, I need to remind everyone these preliminary numbers are going to be adjust up and do not include the UFC’s primarily focused male demographic number, the overrun nor peak viewership numbers which will all be out later this week.