UFC Super Bowl weekend show does great ratings for FS1

This past Saturday’s UFC Fight Night event from Houston, TX, did the biggest number for a UFC show on Fox Sports One in a year.

The annual Super Bowl weekend show brought in 1.158 million viewers, the best number for the promotion on the network since last year’s Super Bowl weekend show did 1.32 million viewers.

This year’s show was headlined by the returning “Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung taking on Dennis Bermudez. Jung scored an early first round knockout, possibly preventing the viewership from going higher.

While a fan favorite, Jung has never been a PPV or TV draw as the only two shows he did headline were UFC 163 vs. featherweight champion Jose Aldo (180,000 PPV buys) and UFC on Fuel TV 3 vs. Dustin Poirier (173,000 viewers).

Additionally, the prelims on FS1 averaged 834,000 viewers, also a very good number. The 2016 average for Fight Night prelims was nearly 730,000.

Perhaps helping the main card numbers were the two women’s strawweights fights (Felice Herrig vs Alexa Grasso, Jessica Andrade vs Angela Hill) as women’s fights have generally drawn very well for UFC of late.

Last year’s Super Bowl weekend show did have more star power as the show was originally scheduled to be a PPV but injuries to both Cain Velasquez and Fabricio Werdum for their heavyweight title fight caused the event to be put on FS1 instead.

The show featured Johny Hendricks vs Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson, plus Roy Nelson and Ovince St. Preux in main card bouts.