UFC on Versus draws 1.24 million viewers

http://www.mmamania.com/2010/3/23/1386730/ufc-on-versus-draws-1-2-million
thats not a bad result considering it was on versus

plus it was on a sunday

good for mma looks good for the future on vs plus its back on direct t.v which helped a lot

Well that and there was not a lot of time to inform the Direct TV audience of the change and the option of watching the fight. 1.24 million is a great number if you consider the Direct TV fiasco and the fact a lot of cable companies don't even carry that channel.

For comparision
WEC 43 - 419K
WEC 44 - 414K
WEC 45 - 330K
WEC 46 - 640K
WEC 47 - 373K
AVG (last 5) - 435.2K... only about 1/3 of what the UFC got. Just slap the UFC name on WEC and #s will go up.

The WEC will fold into the UFC at the end of the year. Bank on it.

Merger, and it's gonna rock.

Wow, Zuffa would be stupid not to merge the two.

No way the merger doesn't happen now. Even with the UFC backing off a counter promotion of Strikeforce, ensuring Strikeforce doesn't counter promote the WEC card there is no way it does near UFC numbers.


So in summary -

UFC on VS smashes WEC numbers.
WEC on PPV does a fraction of UFC numbers.


It's all about the brand-jemins.

no big names either, especially the main event(though jones is certainly on it's way). But their were heavies, which is a stark contrast from your typical Vs cards.

As far as merger I think there has to be a conflict in terms of the TV deals, otherwise what's the holdup? I would have merged years ago.

The UFC was intent on building more brands, Pride as well, perhaps in an effort to stifle the room for non Zuffa non UFC brands to grow, but I think the WEC experiment has ran it's course. It's time for FW and BW to join the UFC, and the top three WEC lightweights to prove how good they really are.

As long as they still have free cards of VS, MMA fans won't lose.

Wonder how this will affect Spike TV in the future? I bet we won't see as much there and we will see more on VS.

I hope not , Versus 10,000 commercial breaks almost made me tear my hair out.

bigbeastcardinal12 wrote:

Wonder how this will affect Spike TV in the future? I bet we won't see as much there and we will see more on VS.

this is my point. UFC has a contract with Spike. They have grown up on that channel, the biggest fight in their history was on that channel. How does Spike feel about splitting all future UFC free TV fights with Vs? The existence of the WEC made it easy to say which station gets which fights. I think a merger makes it all very muddy, will probably take fights away from Spike, and I can't see Spike being cool with it.

I guess the rating is good in comp to WEC but Versus reaches almost the same amount of households as SpikeTV and i think they got the DirecTV deal back in time for the card. The amount of viewers looks fairly weak considering strength of card and what UFC gets for weaker fight night cards.

Spike has no power to negotiate with the UFC though. What can they say, "we won't do UFC shows anymore unless you do such and such" to the UFC? Not happening. Spike TV is only relevant because of the UFC.

Haha nice^ those are my thoughts exactly, would Spike even be around still without the UFC?

UFC owes a lot to Spike TV as well. They can easily stay afloat on CSI re runs, pro wrestling and douchy shows like Manswers but they play the shit out of old UFC fights and make UFC accesible every day of the week. I've met several fans who got into the UFC watching all the Unleashed shows on SpikeTV. That's a great deal for the UFC and they would not want to lose that because no other channel will allocate as much time to the UFC as SpikeTV has while giving them freedom to do their own thing when most stations won't...except VS. but far more people watch SpikeTV than VS. and it's not just because the UFC. SpikeTV/TNN has been around for a long long time. UFC would tell VS. to go piss up a rope before they ever left their deal with SpikeTV.