Bellator’s first true “Scott Coker event” was a major success for the promotion. In addition to setting a live gate and attendance record for the promotion, Bellator 131 set a viewership record, drawing an average of 1.2 million viewers on Spike TV. The broadcast peaked with 2 million viewers during the main event between Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar.
That’s a massive win for an event that the promotion was banking on to be big. Also, going head to head against UFC 180 meant that viewership would suffer some. The UFC 180 main event was over prior to the start of Ortiz vs. Bonnar which could account for some of the bump for the main event peak numbers.
Watch Kid Nate & Luke Thomas talk UFC vs Bellator
The UFC 180 prelims on Fox Sports 1 drew an average of 624,000 viewers according to The MMA Report. That’s below average for FS1 prelim numbers, but is still up from UFC 179.
There has been some speculation based on search traffic that UFC 180 will do very poorly at the PPV box office, but there have been worse prelim numbers for the promotion.
Going up against the UFC is a horrible idea for the World Series of Fighting, going up against the UFC and a huge Bellator card was a disaster.
World Series of Fighting 15 averaged just 179,000 viewers. That’s significantly worse than their average viewership.
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