TV Ratings: UFC Earns Just 1.7 Overnight on FOX (Also: MLB on FOX, NASCAR Nationwide Series)

Posted by | 05/07/2012 at 9:52 pm

The third edition of the ‘UFC on FOX’ was way off in the ratings compared to the previous two telecasts. In other news, baseball action on FOX drew low numbers and ABC’s NASCAR Nationwide Series season debut suffered a slight decline.

  • UFC Down Double-Digits on FOX: The third edition of the ‘UFC on FOX’ drew a 1.7 overnight rating on FOX Saturday night, down 37% from the most recent telecast in January (2.7), and down 51% from the first telecast last November (3.5). (Sports Business Daily)
  • Another Low Number For Baseball on FOX: Regional Major League Baseball action featuring White Sox/Tigers in 41% of markets drew a 1.4 overnight rating on FOX Saturday afternoon — down 18% from coverage featuring Cardinals/Braves last season (1.7), and down 42% from coverage featuring Yankees/Red Sox in 2010 (2.4).
  • ABC’s Nationwide Series Season Debut Down Slightly: Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series Aaron’s 312 drew a 2.0 overnight rating on ABC, down a tick from the network’s first race last season, the March 7 Sam’s Town 300 from Las Vegas (2.1). The 2.0 overnight for the NASCAR Nationwide Series topped both Stanley Cup playoff games on NBC over the weekend (1.6 on Saturday and 1.0 on Sunday) as well as the previously mentioned MLB (1.4) and UFC (1.7) telecasts on FOX. (Sports Business Daily)
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  • Mike

    Why are the baseball ratings so low? It seems MLB ratings are much lower than NBA ratings is that the case because most fans only care about watching the Yankees and Red Sox?

    • Paulsen

      MLB ratings have been lower than NBA ratings for about five years now in the regular season (and, of course, the NBA Finals has topped the World Series in three of the past four years). These things are cyclical, however, and MLB will probably be back on top of the NBA by the end of the decade.

  • http://asportsscribe.blogspot.com Jason Clinkscales

    To be fair, this past Saturday – as all first Saturdays in May – was the most packed-day on the sports calendar.

  • Joe

    The interesting thing is everyone talks about how popular MLB is getting and the NHL is really not that far behind. Here are a few examples.

    1) NHL Stanley Cup gets about the same rating as the League Championships for MLB at about 5 to 6 million people. Granted the NHL finals are mostly on NBC vs TBS but TBS is is 100 million homes compared to 115 for NBC. NBCSN is still in only about 79.3 million homes so it is hard to know what the ratings would actually be with a larger distribution.  In each of the last three years the NHL Stanley Cup has had one game with over 8 million viewers.

    2) regular season: MLB 2.7 viewers on Fox (1.8 rating). NHL 1.6 million on NBC (1.0 rating).
        A couple of big differences. Fox as at least 3 regional games at one time and sometimes more so you have atleast 6 markets to the NHL’s 2 markets. The extra 4 markets of more would bring the NHL close to 2 million viewers and certainly atleast 2/3′s the viewership of the popluar MLB.  In the 90′s the NHL had higher ratings on Fox then MLB has now when they had regional games as two years had a 2.1 rating and a 2.0 rating. Fox MLB was 1.8 last year.  The Winter Classis is averaged in those rating numbers but so are prime time games on Fox for MLB.

    I am not trying to argue that the NHL is as popular as MLB. What I am saying is the NHL is much closer that you would think and the mainstream media would have you believe. FYI NHL playoffs are way up over last year as NBC is averaging 2.5 million viewers on weekend games.