The final television ratings are in for last Sunday’s UFC Fight Night 103 in Phoenix, Arizona.
The UFC’s first show of 2017 is in the books, and the television ratings are in for Yair Rodriguez’s dominant win over B.J. Penn from last Sunday. Sports TV Ratings reported that UFC Fight Night 103 averaged 1.09 million viewers for the two-hour main card broadcast. Peak viewership came during the main event, with 1.6 million tuning in for the 12:00-12:15 AM ET quarter-hour window.
Those numbers are way down from the last two times the UFC held a mid-January, Sunday night show on FS1. In 2015, Conor McGregor’s win over Dennis Siver averaged 2.751 million viewers and peaked at over 3 million. Last year, Dominick Cruz’s bantamweight title victory over T.J. Dillashaw averaged 2.28 million viewers, with ratings peaking at 2.464 million for Travis Browne vs. Matt Mitrione.
As was the case for all three shows, there were numerous promotional spots during FOX’s NFL playoffs broadcasts. For last Sunday, the Green Bay Packers’ thrilling win over the Dallas Cowboys was the highest-rated divisional round game in history, with an average of 48.5 million viewers. However, unlike the 2015 and 2016 events, Rodriguez vs. Penn had to contend with the Pittsburgh at Kansas City game, which was moved from 1:00 PM ET to 8:20 PM ET due to an ice storm. The game did not go final until about 11:20 PM ET. It also must be said that last Sunday’s main event was of considerably lower value than McGregor vs. Siver or Dillashaw vs. Cruz.
The 1.09 million average is the best mark for a UFC Fight Night on FS1 since Cris Cyborg’s TKO of Lina Lansberg in September, which averaged 1.1 million and peaked at over 1.3 million.
The next UFC Fight Night on FS1 will be on Super Bowl weekend, as Dennis Bermudez fights Chan Sung Jung in the main event on Saturday, February 4th in Houston, Texas.
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