Sasahara: DREAM.9 TV Ratings Exceed Expectations
by Chris Nelson on May 27, 2009 1:31 AM EDT
in MMA News
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Ratings are in for last night's prime time TBS presentation of Fighting and Entertainment Group's DREAM.9, and although the show ended with some controversy, it seems to have been a modest success with viewers nonetheless.
DREAM event producer Keiichi Sasahara (right) told Kamipro that the show pulled an average 16.2% rating with a high of 19.1% during the Joe Warren-"Kid" Yamamoto bout. These numbers alone are nothing jaw-dropping, but are certainly marked improvements over the numbers for the last prime time-televised DREAM event - September 2008's DREAM.6 - which pulled a 9% average rating with a high quarter-hour of 13.4% during Yoshihiro Akiyama's match. Before DREAM.9, Sasahara stated that the promotion's goal was a 15% average.
Sasahara cited the Hokkaido and Fukushima prefectures as particularly strong markets, topping out at 22% and 20+% respectively.
The lead-in to DREAM and the first part of TBS' "Martial Arts Festival" saw Japanese boxing champion Daisuke Naito defend his WBC flyweight strap against China's Xiong Zhao Zhong. According to Sasahara, the bout drew a 20.4% rating - the second poorest prime time ratings draw of Naito's career, yet still enough to help buoy DREAM's numbers. For reference, Naito's strongest performance was a 40.9% average for his 2007 bout against Daiki Kameda.
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Freakshows + exciting legit fighters + rad production values = winning formula.
That shit was just straight up fun. I know MMA is not pro-wrestling, but the UFC could learn a thing or two from the theatrics here (talking about production values, not freakshow fights). And I’m a pretty big UFC fanboy.
I have heard that the fights shown on the TBS broadcast were:
- Sapp/Minowa
- Canseco/Choi
- JZ/Kawajiri
- Tokoro/Cullum
- KID/Warren
Great rating for DREAM after the past few rating duds.
This should be something positive they can definitely build on.
If the boxing lead in would have done better, their ratings would have surely been even higher.
Can’t wait for DREAM.10.
by MMASuPreMaCy on May 27, 2009 3:28 AM EDT up reply actions
Funny how folks love shitting on DREAM when they get poor ratings, but now…
[crickets]
by Chris Nelson on May 27, 2009 11:52 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
Agreed
Zach Arnold is probably all pissed becaused he had to say that DREAM actually got good ratings.
He tried to point out that Kid lost and it will hurt the ratings next time Kid is on, but then he follows it up with, probably not. =)
by MMASuPreMaCy on May 27, 2009 1:22 PM EDT up reply actions
Zach normally tells it like it is, lets face it there are a lot of bad things to talk about in Japanese MMA too and it’s not bagging on it to discuss those things. Heck Zach seems to be quite positive about it in his article where sites like Sherdog talked about how weak Naito’s ratings were or just called Dream’s “respectable” as opposed to “strong” or “very good” like Zach did. Just because bad news has been reported in the past doesn’t mean that the guy dislikes them, lets face it Dream needed this rating pretty badly due to their past rating issues and it’s great that they got it.
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