Bellator 85 Draws 938,000 Viewers in Thursday Night Spike TV Debut

938,000 viewers tuned in to watch the Bellator Fighting Championships’ Spike TV debut on Thursday night, network officials announced Friday.

The figure marks a sharp viewership increase from Bellator’s past seasons on MTV2, which averaged between 155,000 and 230,000 viewers over the span of about 21 months. Spike TV -- the longtime broadcast partner of The Ultimate Fighting Championship -- is available in about 98 million homes, while MTV2 is available in roughly 80 million, according to an industry source.

According to Spike TV president Kevin Kay, viewership peaked at 1.2 million for the opening 15 minutes of the broadcast, and an audience of 1.1 million witnessed the featherweight title bout between Pat Curran and Patricio Freire. 950,000 viewers saw Michael Chandler defend his lightweight strap against Rick Hawn later in the evening.

Bellator 85 took place at the UCI Bren Center in Irvine, Calif., and was headlined by a lightweight title confrontation between Chandler and Rick Hawn. Chandler put forth arguably the best performance of his young career, as the 26-year-old strangled Hawn with a second-round rear-naked choke to retain his belt.

The result marked the second successful title defense of the evening, as Curran kicked off the Spike TV broadcast by taking a hard-fought split decision over Freire. The evening’s main draw also saw Mikhail Zayats and Jacob Noe advance to the Season 8 light heavyweight tournament semifinals by earning first-round technical knockouts over UFC veterans Renato Sobral and Seth Petruzelli.

http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/Bellator-85-Draws-938000-Viewers-in-Thursday-Night-Spike-TV-Debut-49163

Real impressive numbers. Very entertaining night of fights as well, from the prelims through the main card.

I guess that guys that really were responsible for a large part of your success aren't so stupid after all.

Viacom & Spike building Bellator's brand is just in it's infancy. These ratings are gonna shake a lot of people's views on you eternally being the only major player in MMA. How do you think an offer to Viacom to purchase Bellator as they continue to cut in to your business in the next few years is gonna go over. Haha!

For your own good I hope all the casinos in Las Vegas cut your markers to '$0'. You might need that credit sometime in the not to distant future to invest in cardboard.

Bellator 85 ratings: Spike TV debut does 'fantastic' numbers
mmajunkie.com - Dann Stupp Jan 18, 2013

Bellator's Season 8 debut produced "fantastic" ratings, according to Spike TV President Kevin Kay.

With the move from MTV2 to Spike TV, Thursday's Bellator 85 event averaged 938,000 viewers, nearly three times the organization's previous record.

Bellator 85 took place at Bren Events Center in Irvine, Calif. Featherweight champion Pat Curran and lightweight champion Michael Chandler made successful tittle defenses on the four-fight main card, which followed Spike.com prelims.

The Spike TV broadcast peaked with a 0.7 rating and nearly 1.2 million viewers for the opening fight betweem Curran and challenger Patricio "Pitbull" Freire. The night's other title fight, Chandler vs. Rick Hawn, averaged 950,000 viewers before the audience saw a noticeable dropoff after midnight (the broadcast officially ran until 12:12 a.m. ET).

Compared to the Season 7 debut, ratings were up 394 percent.

Bellator's previous ratings record came in May 2011, when Bellator 44 drew 325,000 viewers. Overall, Bellator's 50 events on MTV2 averaged 180,000 viewers per event.

Bellator's all-time ratings include:

Bellator 85 ratings: 938,000 viewers
Bellator 74-84 ratings (Season 7 average on MTV2): 162,000
Bellator 71-73 ratings (Summer Series average on MTV2): 180,000
Bellator 60-70 ratings (Season 6 average on MTV2): 155,000
Bellator 49-59 ratings (Season 5 average on MTV2): 186,000
Bellator 46-48 ratings (Summer Series average on MTV2): 229,000
Bellator 35-45 ratings (Season 4 average on MTV2): 204,000

http://www.mmajunkie.com/news/2013/01/bellator-85-ratings-spike-tv-debut-does-fantastic-numbers

Great day for Bellator! and for the sport in general. They are in an extremely strong financial position

I really do believe they are gonna force the UFC to have tournaments!

I bet you guys UFC will have 8 man Tournaments

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/bellator-ratings-spike-were-mixed-bag-203745464--mma.html

Zuffa shill kevin lole says Bellators ratings sucked...

PRIDE NEVER DIE wrote:http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/bellator-ratings-spike-were-mixed-bag-203745464--mma.html

Zuffa shill kevin lole says Bellators ratings sucked...

Does anyone still care what Kevin LOLe says?

just tweeted that asshole asking why he is such a shill

lmao at nearly 1 million being a MIXED BAG?

Shilling at it's finest

It had a strong lead-in from TNA Impact Wrestling, which averaged 1.82 million viewers, and failed to keep it.

Maybe because not all Wrestling fans like MMA. Maybe because theres a younger audience that goes to bed after 10pm for school and shit.

What a stupid argument.

---

The majority of his article is comparing 1 bellator show to every fight night and TUF episode. of course UFC has a bigger brand name over a long peroid of time

It's not like anyones claiming bellator is doing better than UFC. just that it was a vast improvement from it's MTV 2 friday night slot. jesus.

also reading the comments someone said it went up against a basketball game.

so Bjorn can use the "avengers" type excuse then

"sorry guys but no one watched bellator because of the Lakers/Heat game" :-D

Brad • 1 hour 25 minutes ago

Obviously Iole just wanted to hatchet Bellator here. Sure they lost half of their lead-in, but back when TUF started, Raw did an average 3.81 rating for all of 2005, and TUF1 did a 1.6 average (a loss of almost 60%).

Don't worry Kevin, facts aren't all that important.

LOL

'Bellator MMA Live shed 49 percent of the audience the wrestling show delivered.'

There was no wrestling show before Bellator. It was a fake pro 'wrestling' fictional spectacle. Also, Bellator kept about the same percent of that crap's viewers as UFC did when they followed W'W'E on Spike. Which sponsors want these fans of a phony sport, anyway?

'The number of males 18-34, which is MMA's primary demographic'.

Why? Bellator may get a somewhat older audience, like most real sports do. That just means different sponsors, and perhaps some selling bigger-ticket items.

Wny even read this guy? He is a propagandist for Zuffa, and some boxing promoters as well. And don't engage him on Twitter. I blocked this MFer so he won't get the traffic.

Awesome. Hope they can keep the numbers. It was a good night of fights, too bad they didn't step up much on the production but OK.

(where's the spinning Dana when we need it, Dag. haha)

Kevin Iole is one of the biggest tool bag shills in MMA. I never read his BS articles.

Bellator is the next big thing in America. Kevin should just admit that he´s a Zuffa shill, all of those "journalists" should admit what they truly are.

They could really use a better timeslot, in my opinion.
Ten is a bit late, especially during a weekday, when most people have to work. They don't really have anything to gain from following up Impact, two completely different programs.

Either they need to return to Friday or maybe get an 8 pm timeslot some other weekday (preferably Wednesday, as there's usually nothing to.compete with)

Too many people are out having fun on fridays so imo thursday is better, just bump impact up 1 hour so bellator starts at 8 that should help them out.

wekka wrote:They could really use a better timeslot, in my opinion.
Ten is a bit late, especially during a weekday, when most people have to work. They don't really have anything to gain from following up Impact, two completely different programs.

Either they need to return to Friday or maybe get an 8 pm timeslot some other weekday (preferably Wednesday, as there's usually nothing to.compete with)

Yeah, bumping up an hour or two would be great. I like it on Thursday just hate going to work tired.