There were low expectations for what was not a very compelling UFC Argentina fight card, and on the heels of a very impressive rating for UFC Fight Night: Rodriguez vs. Korean Zombie the week prior, last Saturday’s event in Buenos Aires featured a rarity.
MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer notes that the preliminary card actually had more viewers than the main card, which doesn’t usually happen for FS1 shows, but the lead-in was a college football game between Michigan and Indiana.
The UFC Argentina preliminary card, headlined by Michel Prazeres’ first-round submission win over Bartosz Fabinski, drew 707,000 viewers, the best number for prelims on FOX Sports 1 since the first FS1 show of 2018.
The main card from Buenos Aires, Argentina, headlined by Santiago Ponzinibbio’s fourth-round knockout of Neil Magny in a battle of ranked welterweights, averaged just 632,000 viewers. The ratings numbers mainly declined throughout the show, which means the audience was still being boosted by the big number from the football game that ended more than two hours earlier.
The most-watched match on the main show was the opener, Cynthia Calvillo’s first-round submission win over Poliana Botelho, which did 715,000 viewers.
Michigan vs. Indiana averaged 2.27 million viewers on Fox Sports 1, with an 18-49 demo rating of 0.64, good for 3rd among all cable programming on Saturday. UFC Argentina finished 14th and 16th respectively when dividing up the preliminary and main cards. Both broadcasts did 0.25 ratings, but the main card lost viewership, so essentially FS1 lost a pretty sizable chunk of its audience once the football game ended. Still, this was still a better rating than UFC Moncton back in October, so it’s certainly not one of their worst showings by any means.
As for other combat sports action over the weekend, Bellator 209 averaged 381,000 viewers on Friday night, with Paramount Network (and streaming service DAZN) broadcasting the Israel-based card on a literal one-day tape delay. The main event featured featherweight champion Patricio Freire defending his title against Emmanuel Sanchez, and was the fourth-lowest viewership total for Bellator MMA in 2018. Peak viewership using DVR+3 was 573,000. Bellator 197 is the low-mark on Paramount Network, as Michael Chandler’s win over Brandon Girtz did just 242,000. Tape delay is terrible and Viacom should stop this practice.
Lastly, Top Rank Boxing on ESPN had a special one-fight broadcast, the WBO junior welterweight title between Maurice Hooker and Alex Saucedo from Oklahoma City. With the Chicago Bulls at Milwaukee Bucks NBA game as its lead-in, the event averaged 950,000 viewers and peaked at slightly over 1 million despite the midnight ET start time. Bulls-Bucks averaged 1.7 million viewers and a 0.71 rating, Hooker vs. Saucedo had a 0.36 rating and finished 6th in Friday programming, which is fairly strong. Perhaps future UFC shows on ESPN could similarly benefit from such lead-ins.