MMAPayout.com has learned that the premiere of UFC Primetime last night on Spike drew a combined total of 1,494,000 viewers in 10PM EST time slot.
For some perspective, the highest rated Countdown special of last year drew 782,000 viewers for its debut.
The interesting thing to see will be how many viewers they can keep. They are doing tons of replays of these shows too, my guess is about 2.5-3 million households or more will see each by the time all is said and done. I also expect a very high conversion rate to PPV buys.
One concern I had was that as good as the show was, if they draw the same 600,000 fans it wouldn’t be that huge of a difference maker. It looks like they are well on their way to a big number.