The third episode of The Ultimate Fighter 23 debut on Wednesday night on FS1 and featured Team Claudia’s Tatiana Suarez defeating Team Joanna’s JJ Aldrich by submission in the second round.
According to Nielson sources, the show drew 414,000 viewers in the preliminary ratings (Live+SD) and this is up nearly 7 percent from last weeks viewership of 387,000 viewers in the preliminary ratings. In comparison to episode 3 of last spring’s season of the UFC reality show, Wednesday’s episode is up nearly 14 percent from episode 3 of The Ultimate Fighter 21 (364,000).
When it came to the sports competition on cable, the night was won the early NBA playoff game (Atlanta vs. Cleveland) on TNT with 3.5 million viewers and the NHL playoff game (Washington vs. Pittsburgh) on NBCSN drew 1.816 million viewers. Other top programs on cable from Wednesday night include Little Women LA Reunion on Lifetime (1.307 million), Real Housewives of NYC (1.323 million) on Bravo and Pawn Stars (1.724 million) on History.
The +3 DVR viewership for Wednesday night’s episode on The Ultimate Fighter 23 will be released by Nielson on Tuesday and in the second episode, the viewership went up 63 percent from the preliminary ratings (Live+SD) to the +3 DVR number.