{"id":9451,"date":"2020-07-27T13:02:59","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T13:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.incirliseviye.com\/?p=9451"},"modified":"2020-07-27T13:02:59","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T13:02:59","slug":"ufc-249-prelims-viewership-on-espn-not-as-strong-as-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/?p=9451","title":{"rendered":"UFC 249 prelims viewership on ESPN not as strong as expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This story was updated at 4:10 PM Eastern. |\u00a0Image: USA Today\/MMA Junkie<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The viewership for the UFC 249 prelims on ESPN were much lower than expected Saturday given both the strong 700,000 buy estimate\u00a0reported by Sports Business Journal&#8217;s\u00a0John Ourand\u00a0on Monday\u00a0and the absence of any major live pro sports as competition or as a lead in.<\/p>\n<p>The prelims averaged 1.154 million viewers for the complete four hour broadcast, which included a makeshift one hour pre-show with no fights,\u00a0down about 3% from the last prelims show for UFC 248 in March.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ourand tweeted Tuesday that the numbers &#8220;look good&#8221;, pointing out that the 8-10 PM block averaged 1.466 million with an estimated 500,000 tuning in on ESPN+ where the fights were also simulcast. The show peaked at 1.592 million viewers for the Donald Cerrone vs. Anthony Pettis fight at 9:45 PM Eastern.<\/p>\n<p>Traditionally, ratings for prelims have only included the two hours immediately prior to the start of the PPV. By comparison, Saturday&#8217;s number included all four which included the aforementioned fightless first hour which almost certainly dragged down the average.<\/p>\n<p>The show averaged a 0.48 in the 18-49 demo, identical to the last prelims show, and finished second\u00a0in Saturday&#8217;s cable TV rankings.<\/p>\n<p>The high water mark for 2020 to date was the January prelims show, the lead-in for the massive Conor McGregor vs. Cerrone pay-per-view. That show&#8217;s prelims averaged 1.767 million viewers and topped the cable rankings with a 0.73 in the 18-49 demo.<\/p>\n<p>The strongest demo on Saturday was men 18-49 where the show averaged a 0.72 and beat everything else on cable with the closest competition doing a 0.49.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a look at how the UFC PPV prelims on ESPN have done so far this year:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Click Here: <a href='https:\/\/www.nrlshops.com\/United-Kingdom-Rugby-Jerseys' title='United Kingdom Rugby Jerseys'>United Kingdom Rugby Jerseys<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This story was updated at 4:10 PM Eastern. |\u00a0Image: USA Today\/MMA Junkie The viewership for the UFC 249 prelims on ESPN were much lower than expected Saturday given both the strong 700,000 buy estimate\u00a0reported by Sports Business Journal&#8217;s\u00a0John Ourand\u00a0on Monday\u00a0and the absence of any major live pro sports as competition or as a lead in. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/onhee.com\/?p=9451\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;UFC 249 prelims viewership on ESPN not as strong as expected&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}