TV By The Numbers has up the overnight ratings for the UFC on Fox 3 card and they are down dramatically from the January show. The show did 2.25 million viewers and a 1.0 rating, while the aforementioned January show had overnight numbers of 3.98 million viewers for hour 1 and 4.77 million viewers for hour 2, pulling well over a 2.0 rating. Last night did a 4 share, compared to a 7 share in January. And neither show came close to the first Fox effort, which was the single heavyweight championship fight last November.
This has to be seen as somewhat predictable as the starpower for this show was down significantly from that second Fox effort. While that show had Michael Bisping, Chael Sonnen and Rashad Evans, last night had Josh Koscheck, Jim Miller and Nate Diaz.
This does fight against the idea that it’s the brand that people will tune in to Fox to see. The fact of the matter is, there was also a major boxing pay-per-view with two fights that had huge casual interest. I doubted that this would be as good for the UFC as they suggested it would, thinking people would turn it into a big night of fights rather than just spending $70 on the pay-per-view and sticking there.
These overnight ratings do tend to change, but not so significantly that it’s going to catch up to the previous Fox efforts.
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