The UFC 173 Preliminary Card on Fox Sports 1 took place this past Saturday and featured Michael Chiesa winning his second straight fight as he defeated Francisco Trinaldo by unanimous decision. 
According to Nielsen sources, the UFC 173 preliminary overnight viewership number for the preliminary card landed at 697,000 total viewers, which is down 7 percent from last month’s UFC 172 prelims.
Saturday marked the fourth UFC pay-per-view preliminary card to air on Fox Sports 1 and the last two pay-per-view preliminary cards have had under 800,000 viewers after the first two pay-per-view preliminary cards of 2014 had over 900,000 viewers each.
When it came to the competition, the UFC 173 preliminary card went up against conference final games in the NBA and NHL playoffs. Along with the playoff games, the UFC card also went up against a MLB game on Fox and all of the sport programming obviously hurt the UFC total viewership numbers.
Here is the UFC pay-per-view preliminary card numbers in 2014 to date.
UFC 169: 933,000
UFC 170: 936,000
UFC 171: 305,000 (aired on Fox Sports 2)
UFC 172: 750,000
UFC 173: 697,000
Stay tuned to TheMMAReport.com for more updates on MMA TV ratings.