The second episode of The Ultimate Fighter 20 debuted on Wednesday night on Fox Sports 1 and saw Joanne Calderwood advance to the next round of the tournament with a decision victory over Emily Kagan.
According to Nielson sources, the preliminary viewership for the show came in at 574,000 viewers, which is up 7 percent from last week’s debut episode in the preliminary ratings.
Along with the preliminary viewership growing 7 percent, the show also grew in the Adult 18-49 demographic. Last week’s episode had 359,000 viewers in this demographic, while Wednesday night’s episode had 364,000 (+1.3 percent) and in the first nineteen seasons of The Ultimate Fighter, viewership for episode two was down an average of 6 percent on both an overall basis and Adults 18-49.
Between the debut showing at 10 p.m. ET and the re-air at 1 a.m. ET, the show combined for 696,000 viewers. When it came to the 10 p.m. ET airing, it was only the sixth time in the twenty seasons that the second episode has delivered a larger audience that the first and the second airing at 1:00 a.m. ET had an additional 122,000 viewers, which is a 39 percent increase over what The Ultimate Fighter 19 repeat broadcast averaged in that window (88,000).
Among Adults 18-49, the show was up 17 percent (75,000 vs. 64,000) and in comparison to the second episode of The Ultimate Fighter 19, Wednesday’s episode was up a hefty 79 percent in total viewers (574,000 vs. 320,000) and 69% among Adults 18-49 (364,000 vs. 215,000).
Earlier this week, it was revealed that the debut episode of The Ultimate Fighter 20 saw a 55 percent increase in viewership with the +3 DVR numbers and the DVR numbers for Wednesday’s episode will not be available until Tuesday of next week and stay tuned to TheMMAReport.com for those numbers.