Bellator Season 10 debuted this past Friday night with Bellator 110 which took place live at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. The event saw both Rampage Jackson and King Mo Lawal advancing to the finals of the light heavyweight tournament.
According to Nielsen sources, Bellator 110’s preliminary viewership landed at 880,000 total viewers, and was up 99% in the adult 18-49 demographic (425,000 18-49 (0.33 rating), 81% in men 18-49, and 54% mean 18-34 compared to season nine debut.
The season nine debuted with a season low of 437,000 total live viewers, but the show was on a Saturday. Season nine’s first Friday night show reached near the season average with over 660,000 total live viewers.
The peak audience viewership came during the main event bout between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Christian M’Pumbu at 11:10 p.m. at 1.3 million viewers. Back in November during Jackson’s Bellator debut against Joey Beltran, his fight peaked at 1.2 million viewers. It should also be noted that this now makes 5-consecutive Bellator live events that have reached a peak over over 900,000 total viewers live.
The show also head-to-head with 2 other major MMA organizations including a tape-delayed WSOF on NBC Sports Network and Titan FC debuting live on the CBS Sports Network. The tape-delayed WSOF fight card had 96,000 viewers and featured Ryan Ford winning the WSOF Canada welterweight title by knockout.
In other competition, Bellator lost of to the WWE on SyFy with Smackdown reaching 2.796 million viewers and 859,000 adults 18-49 (0.68 rating) and NBA Basketball on ESPN which reached 1.374 million viewers and 755,000 million adults 18-49 (0.59 rating).
Stay with TheMMAReport.com for ongoing coverage of the Nielsen ratings battle between Bellator MMA and the UFC.