Ratings: TUF 25 Finale averages 724,000, UFC 213 prelims drop to three-year low on FS1

It wasn’t a banner International Fight Week in terms of television ratings for the UFC.

The ratings are in for The Ultimate Fighter 25 Finale and the UFC 213 preliminary card, both of which aired live on Fox Sports 1. Needless to say, this wasn’t a strong week for viewership.

We’ll start off with Friday’s TUF 25 Finale, headlined by an epic slugfest between Justin Gaethje and Michael Johnson. It’s not often that the UFC has Friday events, so perhaps that’s part of the reason the main card averaged 724,000 viewers, the lowest of any night-time live UFC on FS1 event in 2017. The MMA Report’s Jason Floyd notes that the card peaked at 849,000 viewers during the 10:45-11 PM ET block, during which time Drakkar Klose fought Marc Diakiese. Last year’s TUF 23 Finale (also on a Friday) averaged almost 1.1 million viewers, with Joanna Jedrzejczyk’s strawweight title win over Claudia Gadelha serving as the main event. The TUF 19 Finale in 2014 also topped one million viewers for Frankie Edgar’s dominant win over B.J. Penn.

While the TUF Finale ratings weren’t that impressive, the UFC 213 prelims were pretty much a disaster. Despite a considerable push of Travis Browne as the feature fighter on the FS1 broadcast, the average viewership was the worst for a UFC PPV prelim special on FS1 in three years. MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer has the details.

Saturday night's UFC prelims, headlined by Travis Browne's loss to Aleksei Oleinik on FOX Sports 1, did 657,000 viewers — the lowest number for prelims before a pay-per-view show dating back to UFC 179. That was nearly three years ago, on Oct. 25, 2014, when the prelims before the Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendes featherweight title bout did 536,000 viewers. The previous low for this year was 723,000 before UFC 210, the April 8 show headlined by Daniel Cormier's light heavyweight title defense against Anthony "Rumble" Johnson.

Competing sports last Saturday included Major League Baseball on FOX, NBA Summer League on ESPN, and NASCAR on NBC Sports Network. All of those events outpaced the UFC 213 preliminary card ratings.

There’s no telling what damage the loss of Amanda Nunes vs. Valentina Shevchenko did to UFC 213’s interest, although truth be told, there was very little fanfare for either 213 or the TUF 25 Finale event all week long.

The next primetime UFC on FS1 event is scheduled for Saturday, August 5th in Mexico City, Mexico. Flyweights Sergio Pettis and Brandon Moreno will serve as the main event, marking the first time the UFC has ever had a non-title five-round flyweight headliner. As for the UFC 214 prelims, scheduling conflicts will lead to those bouts being shown on FXX (not FX, but FXX).