Ratings Report: Rousey A Pay-Per-View Star

By all accounts, Ronda Rousey is the UFC’s biggest star.

The female combat champion not only breaks Octagon records, but she stars in movies, models, and breaks hearts faces around the globe.

She’s also a pay-per-view star.

From ratings guru Dave Meltzer:

While it’s too early to get PPV numbers, early indications based on the DirecTV numbers blew away even the most optimistic expectations. The early numbers were said to be far ahead of any Rousey singularly headlined fight in the past. It’s virtually a lock this will break the all-time record for a show headlined by a woman’s fight that the Rousey vs. Liz Carmouche fight did (450,000 buys), and could double the majority of pre-show estimates.

was told DirecTV numbers were roughly identical to the 1/31 show and Google searches for the show, which in most cases is an amazingly accurate predictor of PPV numbers, were four percent ahead of Silva vs. Diaz, and 26 percent below Jones vs. Cormier.

While numbers will fall well short of the Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier fight, there is no current UFC fighter facing an opponent with the name value of Zingano and with such a weak undercard who would have come anywhere close to her numbers. It is possible this could nearly if not double fights like Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos and Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson.

…All trending numbers available at this point back up this show doing far better than expectations. In the U.S., there were 1 million searches for Rousey on 2/28, five times that of second place Anthony Mason (a former NBA star who passed away).