UFC helped make the first night of FOX Sports 1 a successful one.
The network announced Sunday that the primetime portion of its live UFC Fight Night card, which was headlined by Chael Sonnen vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, attracted an impressive 1.78 million viewers during its 8-10:45PM broadcast.
When adjusted to include the entire primetime block–and thus a small portion of “FOX Sports Live”–the new network drew a 1.33 household rating and 1.71 million viewers from 8-11PM ET. FS1’s primetime performance beat out the four major networks in Adults 18-49, Adults 18-34, Men 18-49 and Men 18-34.
FOX Sports 1 added that its primetime content attracted 25x the viewership of last year’s combined broadcasts on SPEED, FOX Soccer and FUEL.
Though successful compared to last year’s airing on SPEED, FOX Sports Live turned away a significant portion of its UFC lead-in. According to the announcement, the show only averaged 476,000 viewers.
