The UFC 187 Prelims that aired Saturday night on FS 1 did an average of 780,000 viewers. A flyweight title eliminator between John Dodson and Zach Makovsky was the featured prelim fight.
This was the 2nd lowest prelim number of the year for UFC, trailing only the UFC 186 prelims, which did 710,000 viewers. There is usually a fairly strong correlation between the prelims number and the number of PPV buys, which would seem to indicate a number well short of the 500,00-600,000 PPV buys that many thought this show would do.
It should be noted that the prelims on FS 1 got off to a late start due to an MLB game going into extra innings and they started on FS 2. The FS 2 portion of the show did 173,000 viewers. The show also went up against the Warriors-Rockets playoff game on ESPN that did 5.7 million viewers for the 2nd hour. The first hour was up against the NBA pre-show on ESPN, which did 1.7 million viewers.
For last year’s Memorial Day Weekend show, the UFC 173 prelims with a featured prelim fight of Michael Chiesa and Francisco Trinaldo did 697,000 viewers on FS 1 and that show ended up doing about 215,000 buys.
The 10 most recent PPV prelims show on FS 1 have averaged 867,700 viewers. Here’s a list of those numbers.
Show
Network
Viewers
UFC 186
FS 1
710,000
UFC 185
FS 1
1,003,000
UFC 184
FS 1
1,205,000
UFC 183
FS 1
1,546,000
UFC 182
FS 1
1,040,000
UFC 181
FS 1
840,000
UFC 180
FS 1
664,000
UFC 179
FS 1
536,000
UFC 178
FS 1
697,000
UFC 177
FS 1
436,000