UFC 243 Prelims Attract 559K Viewers to ESPN2; Bellator 229 Averages 301K on Paramount

The UFC 243 prelims averaged 559,000 viewers on ESPN2 Saturday, according to ShowBuzz Daily.

That makes it the lowest-rated pay-per-view preliminary card of the ESPN era. However, in addition to being on the Worldwide Leader’s secondary network, the event had plenty of competition with college football and the Major League baseball playoffs airing on other channels.

UFC 243 took place at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, Australia, and was headlined by a highly-anticipated middleweight title unification bout between Israel Adesanya and Robert Whittaker. The featured matchup on the preliminary bill was a welterweight tilt pitting Jake Matthews against Rostem Akham.

The previous low occurred when the UFC 240 prelims drew 722,000 viewers to ESPN on July 27. A year ago, the UFC 229 prelims averaged 1.308 million viewers on FS1 as a lead-in to the blockbuster Khabib Nurmagomedov-Conor McGregor showdown.

Elsewhere, Bellator 229 attracted 301,000 viewers to Paramount Network on Friday night for a card headlined by a welterweight duel between Lorenz Larkin and Andrey Koreshkov. That was the third-lowest rated card for a Bellator event this year on the network.