UFC 204 was filled with high-drama in the main event between Michael Bisping and Dan Henderson, as well as entertaining comeback victories, impressive finishes, and all-around quality action. With that said, UFC 204 was anything but a ratings success.

The preliminary card ratings on FS1 averaged just 678,000 viewers (per SportsTVRatings), making it the lowest rated PPV prelim special of 2016. It’s well down from UFC 203’s prelim special, which averaged 870,000 viewers. UFC 204’s feature preliminary bout saw Iuri Alcantara submit Brad Pickett in just 2 minutes, although peak viewership of 837,000 was reached during Damian Stasiak’s dramatic armbar win over Davey Grant, which was the penultimate prelim.

MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer has more details and context on these numbers:

“Besides college football on CBS, NBC, FOX, and ESPN, the San Francisco Giants/Chicago Cubs game did 4,605,000 viewers on the MLB Network, making it the most-watched show on cable television that night.

The previous low for this year was for UFC 198 on May 14 — the prelims before the Stipe Miocic heavyweight title win over Fabricio Werdum — which did 786,000 viewers. The last time a UFC pay-per-view prelims did a lower number than this past weekend’s show was on September 5, 2015, when the prelims before the Demetrious Johnson vs. John Dodson-headlined PPV show did 663,000 viewers.

The 2016 average for UFC PPV prelims is 1,108,000 viewers.”

It figures to be a vastly different story for when the UFC 205 preliminary card rolls around, as that November 12th pay-per-view is projected to be the biggest event in the promotion’s history. We should see ratings that are more along the lines of UFC 196 (1.843 million average), UFC 200 (1.7 million average), or UFC 202 (1.3 million average).