Bellator 360 pulled an average of 487k viewers with a TNA lead in.... that's not even close to UFC unleashed on spike.
The good news is that it was the most watched bellator program ever the bad news is that it's half of what ufc unleashed used to pull.
The live events should pull at least 600k... anything less would be a disaster. At a minimum Bellator wil triple it's audience with the move to spike tv.... but the problem is if they dont build their audience beyond the 600k to 800k it wont work long term.
Over 1 million would be a success.
It peaked at 513k, all fights were reruns, the live event with 2 title fights should do much better
Plus 360 had zero promotion, the first preview for it was yesterday
^ 1st 2 live events will do better for sure.... after that if the audiencce only settles at 600-800k this project is not gonna last 3 years.
I predict the average for bellator for the season will be between 600k to 800k.
There's no way those Bellator 360 ratings could be spun negatively. Almost 500K and they improved for the 2nd episode? That's excellent. I didn't even know about the show and didn't watch it as a result. I certainly know about the event debut.
I'll say they get about 700K for their events. It's obviously going to be better promoted and more interesting than documentaries. What caps it is the tape delay on cable in the west and late time out east. They have the potential to do quite a bit better on their own night without the impediments, but off the bat they're trying to build an audience and get the sure thing of the TNA lead-in. Even if they topped out at 600-800K, they could go on forever, provided their spending didn't get out of control, which it hasn't. How many other shows on Spike do that?
Not enough for the fights they put on. Bellator is awesome.
FixedPartialArts - There's no way those Bellator 360 ratings could be spun negatively. Almost 500K and they improved for the 2nd episode? That's excellent. I didn't even know about the show and didn't watch it as a result. I certainly know about the event debut.
I'll say they get about 700K for their events. It's obviously going to be better promoted and more interesting than documentaries. What caps it is the tape delay on cable in the west and late time out east. They have the potential to do quite a bit better on their own night without the impediments, but off the bat they're trying to build an audience and get the sure thing of the TNA lead-in. Even if they topped out at 600-800K, they could go on forever, provided their spending didn't get out of control, which it hasn't. How many other shows on Spike do that?
they wont be able to go on forever with an audience of 600k to 800k...
that's enough exposure for zuffa to bid their talent up significantly but not enough for spike to properly monetize it (ad sales, carrier fees) to justify the cost of running a national mma promotion.
viacom is gonna have to spend 35 million a year or more on this project... no way will they spend 35 mil plus for an audience of 600k to 800k for live events and 500k for a clip show.
UFC unleashed was pulling a million viewers. fight nights were pulling 2 million viewers, prelims 1.5 million, best of pride was pulling over a million... and viacom paid 35 million for that.
bellator 360 (bellators version of ufc unleashed) had a tna lead in of 1.6 million viewers and they only pulled 500k. That's not a great number. 500k for a clip show is not viable for primetime which means they are gonna have to move it to 11pm (like they did mma uncensored).
if they cant do better than 600k to 800k for their live events they'll eventually get out of the mma promotion business and if they stay in the mma space they'll likely just license mma content from regional promotions like hdnet.