UFC Fight Night a smash ratings hit thanks to Conor McGregor (and NFL)
Two things became immediately clear in the wake of the record ratings for Fox Sports 1 of its UFC Fight Night in Boston telecast on Sunday: One, it doesn't hurt to have constant promotional pushes during an NFL broadcast with 60 million people watching. And two, McGregor is clearly as popular as any athlete in the UFC.
The Nielsen ratings were so good that UFC president Dana White told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday that he believes McGregor's featherweight title fight against Jose Aldo will be the company's biggest pay-per-view of the year.
That's saying something, considering that UFC 182 on Jan. 3 is estimated to have done between 750,000 and 800,000 on pay-per-view already. And that UFC 183 features the returns of both Anderson Silva (from a gruesome broken leg) and Nick Diaz (from a self-imposed retirement). Or that UFC 184 includes two title fights, including Ronda Rousey defending the women's bantamweight belt against Cat Zingano in the co-main and Chris Weidman defending the middleweight title against Vitor Belfort in the main on Feb. 28 at Staples Center in Los Angeles.
"I think that's a huge fight and it beats everything we do this year," White said of the Aldo-McGregor title fight, which still doesn't have a date yet.
The card averaged 2.75 million viewers, and peaked in the 15-minute segment from midnight to 12:15 a.m. ET, during the main event, when it attracted 3.162 million viewers.
The card ranks as the highest-viewed telecast in Fox Sports 1 history among men 18 to 34 (694,000) and men 18 to 49 (1.278 million). It surpassed a game from the National League Championship Series in October which attracted 513,000 viewers in men 18 to 34 and 1.144 milion viewers in men 18 to 49.
Among the other interesting notes were that the show had a total of 4.703 million unique viewers. That beat the Fight Night average viewership from 2014 of 1.7 million by 3 million viewers.
McGregor-Siver was No. 1 across all key male and adult demographics of 111 ad-supported cable networks from 10 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. ET and it was the No. 1 telecast for the day on all cable with men 18 to 34 and men 18 to 49.
In addition, UFC Fight Night was second among adults 18 to 34 and 18 to 49 on all of cable to just an episode of Family Guy that aired at 11 p.m. ET on Swim.
"There were two huge NFL games that Sunday, and people are at home watching TV," White said. "That's why we jumped in there. "We had a football game on where they were promoting the hell out of our fight that had 60 million people watching [by the time it got to overtime]. And we have a guy in Conor who is incredibly marketable and who worked his [butt] off promoting this fight. He's super marketable, great on camera and he can fight. When you have a guy who works as hard as he does and has the abilities that he has, you're going to get a big number."
