The debut episode of The Ultimate Fighter 23 debut on Wednesday with the sixteen elimination fights on FS1 to see which fighters would make it into The Ultimate Fighter house.
According to Nielson sources, the preliminary viewership of the premiere episode on Wednesday night (10p-12a ET) drew 479,000 viewers and this is slightly down from last spring’s debut episode of The Ultimate Fighter 21 (490,000).
Following the premiere of The Ultimate Fighter 23, the season debut of TUF Talk hosted by Karyn Bryant drew 173,000 viewers on FS1. This is a 56 percent jump over last spring’s TUF Talk that followed the premiere episode of The Ultimate Fighter 21 (111,000).
When it came to the sports competition on Wednesday night, the top sports programs on cable were a pair of NBA playoff games on TNT. The first game (8:09-10:47p ET) between the Detroit Pistons and the Cleveland Cavaliers drew 3.420 million, while the late game (10:47p-1:16a ET) between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Los Angeles Clippers had 2.621 million viewers.
When it comes to the ratings for The Ultimate Fighter, the key ratings to pay attention to our the +3 DVR numbers. Those numbers will be released by Nielson on Tuesday and The MMA Report will have those numbers when they are released.