EARLY RATINGS STRONG FOR STRIKEFORCE ON CBS
Courtsey of mmaweekly.com
Early ratings for the CBS broadcast of Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers fell short of a home run, but showed strong numbers in demographics where the sport has historically fared well.
In the event’s headliner, Fedor Emelianenko knocked out Brett Rogers in the second round, while co-headliners Jake Shields and Jason “Mayhem” Miller went the distance with Shields emerging as the new Strikeforce middleweight champion.
The primetime portion of Fedor vs. Rogers (9 p.m. to 11 p.m.) drew an average of 3.79 million viewers, down from CBS’ last foray into MMA with EliteXC’s “Heat,” which averaged 4.3 million viewers in the same time period, according to TVbythenumbers.com.
The primetime numbers for Fedor vs. Rogers don’t include the main event fight. The event ran long with that bout clocking in following the primetime portion of the broadcast.
Even so, in key male demographics, the Saturday fights came in first, edging college football on ABC with a 2.2 rating for males 18-34 and a 2.3 rating for males 18-49.
Overall, the primetime broadcast led in adults 18-34 and 18-49 with 1.7 ratings.
The 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. portion of the Saturday broadcast was the third most watched show on network television.
The 10:00 to 10:30 segment, which featured the bulk of Shields vs. Miller, is at the moment the only fight to crack the Top 20 most watched fights in MMA’s history with U.S. television, coming in at 18th.
Compared to ratings for CBS’ regular Saturday night programming, the event showed marked improvement in male and adult demographics, but shaved 2.33 million total viewers from an average audience of 6.12 million.
Kelly Kahl, Senior Executive Vice President of CBS Primetime, said the strong numbers in key demographics outweighed the decline in overall viewers.
“Typically, we tend to get an older audience on Saturday night,” he said. “We know MMA is probably not your cup of tea if you’re in an older demographic, so that’s hardly surprising.
“Demographics are the reason you put this sport on. You’re not putting this on to get a huge household number, you’re putting it on to try to tap into a younger audience, and it looks like we were successful doing that.”
At the moment, EliteXC’s “Primetime” remains the most watched MMA event in U.S. television history, garnering 4.8 million total viewers.
The Sears Centre Arena, which hosted the event and seats up to 12,000, was a reported sellout, though the official attendance has yet to be released.
“I think we had a really terrific card,” said Kahl. “In every fight we had, there were changes in momentum back and forth. No fight was completely one-sided for the entire duration.”
The ratings for the complete broadcast will be released Tuesday.
“We’ll hope for the best and re-visit and see if we can’t come back around and get another one of these scheduled at some point,” said Kahl.
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