Despite action, Saturday’s UFC on Fox 21 draws record low viewership

Final ratings are in for Saturday night’s UFC on Fox show from Vancouver and for the first time, the final number actually came in lower than the overnight number at 1,983,000 viewers.

There are a couple of reasons for this, discussed in part by Dave Meltzer on Sunday’s Wrestling Observer Radio show. First, the main event ended at 10 PM EST on the nose, meaning there wasn’t the typical audience growth that usually grows with a longer main event that goes past the top of the hour.

Second, and perhaps more relevant, the originally reported overnight number was for the network as a whole. Because some markets aired preseason NFL football in lieu of UFC, those NFL numbers were included in the initial rating. The final number measures only those stations which aired the UFC show.

Saturday’s show “beat” the previous record low for a Fox UFC show which was 2.04 million viewers on July 2013, an event headlined by a Demetrious Johnson flyweight title bout with John Moraga.