Bellator 131: Tito vs. Bonnar Ratings In!

Ratings are in the event stats. 1.24M avg. viewers with a 2M peak. That's approaching UFC on FOX numbers and eclipsing all UFC on FS1 shows throughout the year. 

This is actually fantastic news for MMA fans, as it will give the UFC some much-needed competition in the space on cable. 

To compare, the most stacked FS1 show in quite some time came in September with Jacare/Mousasi and a host of other huge fights, which averaged about 900k viewers.

* Edited at 11.18.2014, 12:41 PM ET *

This just goes to show how far advertising and promoting a fight will go. The biggest problem with the UFC promoting so many shows per year is that the endless commercials all meld into one. No one gets excited about most of the UFC shows anymore because if they miss one, there is always another one on next week. Bellator and the UFC have almost switched roles with the weekly bland card/monthly stacked card concepts.

@hiblet I think that's only one of the problems.  Frequent cards would perform fine if they all had star-power.  But they don't... there isn't enough star power to go around.

2015 it's going to be  one of the most important years in UFC history IMO.  next year we will now for sure if this model (of saturation) is working for them or not, so far it looks like it doesn't but since this year has been plagued with injuries and major card changes, we can give the UFC the benefit of doubt and say this was the main issue why their PPV's and ratings have been so bad.  if the same plague of injuries occur and we have the same results, they'll know their model doesn't work because they leave themselves no room for error, if they have their elite fighters on the cards and still don't get good numbers they will need a change in strategy to keep Bellator at a distance. personally I believe they will have to cut back on the fight nights not having more than 3 events (in total) in a month, they have 6 ******* events on July! that's ******* crazy, I'm sure I'm no gonna watch them all, who could, and still have a regular life? I probably watch half of the events live and 1 third from re-runs and the rest I never watch.

I think we also need to factor in the "casual fan". Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar are recognizable names (albeit irrelevant ones) to nearly all MMA fans. Especially the casual fan who may not know Werdum, or Gastelum or Ellenberger. That fan still knows Tito Ortiz. Bellator did a great job in marketing these "star power" names and it showed in the ratings. 

That will be the Bellator model going forward. One event per month with 4 big events per quarter for a total of 16 shows in 2015. According to the UFC's release yesterday, they're putting on 45 total shows next year. 

Coker match-makes on a fight-by-fight basis. There's no long-term plan and there aren't deep divisions. We'll have recognizable names headlining these Bellator shows with some quality fights on the undercard interspersed with fun, meaningless brawls ala Schilling/Manhoef and Thompson/Lashley.

Either way, the competition is good for the sport.

As far as WSOF is concerned, their last show, which was one of their best, was one of the lowest-rated, doing less than 10% of the total viewers that Bellator did. I don't think they last through 2015, if they even put on a show next year.

WSOF was dumb to put that show on the same night as UFC and Bellator, it just got burried. You are basically fighting the drawing power of the UFC Interim HW title fight  vs Tito Ortiz/Stephan Bonnar vs Melvin Guillard. I really think Bellator would have done even better if they didn't go head to head with the UFC. Despite a stellar rating it did not eclipse all UFC's this year, they still fell short of the UFC FS1 high water mark UFN 36 did 1.4 million average.

I'll be watching the six July events :(

The things I do for you people.

tnx for taking a shot for the team @skelli  ;-)

The 2M peak must have been around the time of King Mo's entrance. Dem big booty ho's o lawd noice