305,000 Tune In For UFC 171 Prelims On FS2

Last Saturday’s UFC 171 event crowned our new welterweight champion. You didn’t have to tune in to FOX Sports 2 to catch this historic moment, you just had to fork out enough coin to buy the pay-per-view.

However, there were fights on FOX Sports 2 as well last Saturday. As part of the lead up to the evenings pay-per-view, four-fights went up on free TV, but most of you probably missed them.

As it turns out, only 305,000 people nationwide tuned in to watch the UFC’s preliminary card special.

MMAPayout.com has the scoop:

MMA Payout has learned that the UFC 171 Prelims on Fox Sports 2 received an average viewership of 305,000.  The prelims were moved to FS2 to compensate for the Pac 12 and Big East tournament Finals which were held during the same time as the event.

The prelims on Saturdays received a 0.56 rating in the adult 18-49 rating and 0.90 in the male 18-49 demo.

UFC PPV Prelims on FS1 or FS2:

UFC 164                             809,000

UFC 165                             722,000

UFC 166                             628,000

UFC 167                             998,000

UFC 168                          1,554,000

UFC 169                             933,000

UFC 170                             936,000

UFC 171                             305,000

Notably, the Big East tournament final featuring Providence and Creighton was the highest rated college basketball game on FS1 averaging 702,000 viewers and the Pac 12 tournament final featuring Arizona and UCLA become the second highest viewed college game on the network with 680,000 viewers.  The Pac 12 tournament preceded the Big East tournament on FS1 although both games were on at the same time as the UFC 171 Prelims.