Dominick Cruz title win draws second-biggest audience ever for UFC on FS 1
A UFC event on Sunday nights during the NFL playoffs looks to turn into an annual tradition after two years of ratings success.
Sunday's Dominick Cruz bantamweight title win over T.J. Dillashaw drew the second-largest audience for a UFC event ever on Fox Sports 1, doing 2,288,000 viewers. The previous record of 2,751,000 was set last January for a similar show on a playoff night with a Conor McGregor vs Dennis Siver main event.
The combination of what was in reality the strongest championship fight ever put on FS 1, and it being strongly promoted on FOX earlier in the day to a heavy adult male sports audience watching the Carolina Panthers vs. Seattle Seahawks game, led to what was the best overall night for FS 1 broadcasting UFC.
The only negative as that due to the late time slot, with the main card airing from 10 p.m. to 12:40 a.m. on a Sunday night, the show peaked early. The most watched match was the Travis Browne win over Matt Mitrione that ended before 11 p.m., doing 2,464,000 viewers.
While the main card number was down from last year, the prelims were far more successful, doing 1,767,000 viewers from 8-10 p.m., for a show headlined by Patrick Cote vs. Ben Saunders. It blew away any prelims ratings for a non-pay-per-view show ever on the station, nearly doubling the old record of 966,000 set for the June 27, 2015 show. Last year's McGregor vs. Siver show did 908,000 viewers for the prelims. .
The first 20 minutes of the post-fight show, running down the close decision in the main event, drew 1,454,000 viewers.
The Cruz vs. Dillashaw title bout, matching a champion who had looked impressive since winning the title against a talkative and well known challenger who lost the title due to repeated injuries and had never been beaten for it, drew pay-per-view level interest. It was promoted to the football audience of 36.7 million viewers as the biggest bantamweight title fight in history.
The metrics coming off the fight were at the same level of a pay-per-view event that would do in the 300,000 buy range. The only prior UFC bantamweight title fight with a similar level of interest would have been the 2011 Cruz vs. Faber fight.