The UFC ranked first among cable programming this past Saturday.
The UFC 316 preliminary card from Newark averaged 1,104,000 viewers and 522,000 viewers (0.39) in the 18-49 demographic, outranking College Baseball on ESPN and the French Open coverage on TNT. Including network programming, UFC ranked behind Major League Baseball on Fox.
The prelims from the Prudential Center were headlined by surging flyweight contender Joshua Van stopping Bruno Gustavo da Silva in the third round by TKO. The remainder of the prelims featured Azamat Murzakanov stopping Brendson Ribeiro in the opening round, Waldo Costes-Acosta beating Serghei Spivac by unanimous decision, and Andreas Gustafsson topping Khao Williams by decision.
The overall audience was UFC’s best prelim figure since the UFC 313 card on March 8 and the promotion’s second largest audience of the year for the prelims.
The show led into the pay-per-view headlined by Merab Dvalishvili vs. Sean O’Malley and Julianna Pena vs. Kayla Harrison.
Previous audiences:
UFC 315 prelims (May 10) – 685,000 viewers and 0.24 in 18-49 on ESPN
UFC 314 prelims (April 12) – 1,028,000 viewers and 0.38 in 18-49 on ESPN
UFC 313 prelims (March 8) – 1,194,000 viewers and 0.45 in 18-49 on ESPN
UFC 312 prelims (Feb. 8) – 881,000 viewers and 0.39 in 18-49 on ESPN
UFC 311 prelims (Jan. 18) – 411,000 viewers and 0.19 on FX against NFL playoffs
Data: Programming Insider
