New York – The fact that history was made on Saturday night when the UFC made its broadcast television debut on FOX and 5.7 million viewers tuned in to watch is old news, but records were also set at FUEL TV, FOX Deportes and FOXSports.com, affirming UFC’s ability to drive consumption across a variety of outlets.
In addition to the live audience on FOX for the UFC heavyweight championship, close to 500,000 viewers watched on FOX Deportes, the leader in U.S. Latino Sports media, for a total of 6.2 million viewers for the live main event, according to Nielsen Media Research. Combine that figure with total duplicated viewership for all pre- and post-fight programming on FUEL TV, FOX Sports Media Group’s dynamic entertainment and sports network for young males, and FOX Deportes, UFC programming delivered a total of 6.7 million impressions across all FSMG television networks.
FOXSports.com, one of the world’s leading sports web sites with almost 30 million unique visitors monthly, also delivered substantial viewing for UFC-related video. On Saturday, FOXSports.com tallied an impressive 257,000 total live streams for the nine undercard matches, while all UFC content during and around the event generated over 1 million streams. Other than Super Bowl-related content, this was the biggest video event in FOXSports.com history.
Additional UFC Premiere Highlights:
FUEL TV
– The two-hour UFC pre-fight show earned a 0.21 coverage area HH rating (77,000 viewers) making it FUEL TV’s highest-rated program of the year. The prefight show also drew FUEL TV’s largest M18-49 audience (58,000) since the network became nationally rated.
– The UFC prefight show ranked as a top 20 show in the time period for Men 18-34 (.29), performing about as well or better than widely distributed networks like History Channel (.31), USA (.25), SyFy (.19) and AMC (.13). FUEL TV also performed well in the Men 18-49 demo (.31), close to or matching ubiquitous networks like Discovery (.36), Comedy Central (.35) and MTV (.31).
FOX Deportes
– The Velasquez-dos Santos fight delivered a 3.9 coverage area HH rating, 487,000 viewers, and 352,000 A18-49 making it the highest-rated fight of any kind in Spanish language cable history.
– Saturday’s undercard coverage ranks as the second highest-rated fight-event in FOX Deportes history with a 3.4 HH rating, 365,000 viewers, and 237,000 A18-49 viewers.
– Saturday’s fight ranks as FOX Deportes’ highest-rated program since the Manchester United vs. Chelsea Premier League soccer match (5.0) on Sept. 18.
FOX Sports
– The hour-long UFC on FOX premiere scored a 3.1/5 household rating/share, with 5.7 million viewers making it the most-watched UFC event ever and the most-watched professional fight of any kind on any network since 2003 when 7.0 million tuned in to watch Lewis-Klitschko on HBO.
– Velasquez-dos Santos is also the highest-rated and most-watched professional fight of any kind on a broadcast network since OSCAR DE LA HOYA’S FIGHT NIGHT on FOX (4.3/6, 5.9 million viewers) in 1998.
– The UFC on FOX premiere broadcast won the 9:00-10:00 PM time period across key demos including Adults 18-34 (3.2) and Men 18-34 (4.3) and tied Adults 18-49 (3.0).
– Among the Men 18-34 demographic, the UFC on FOX premiere posted a 4.3, strong enough to out-rate every college football telecast this season on any network with the exception of last week’s No. 1 vs. No. 2 LSU-Alabama match-up (through 11/12).