WEC 44 Ratings
by Zak Woods on Nov 23, 2009 10:11 PM EST
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WEC 44 ratings are now available.
The WEC fight card, which featured a featherweight title bout between Mike Brown and Jose Aldo, drew an average audience of 414,000 viewers. That is five-thousand fewer viewers than the Cerrone-Henderson fight card in October.
This is the second WEC event to air on Versus since DirecTV dropped the Comcast owned sports station and the newest numbers represents a trend in decreased viewership.
Since the DirecTV-Comcast divorce the WEC has held two events that drew approximately identical viewership. WEC 43 drew 419,000 viewers while WEC 44 drew 414,000 viewers. Prior to DirecTV pulling Versus, WEC 42 drew 670,000 viewers. That is a 37% drop in ratings for both events when compared to pre-dispute numbers.
MMA Junkie points out that Versus' normal programming usually draws within the 400,000-500,000 range. Still, as a MMA fan it is painful to see meaningful and exciting title fights drawing nowhere near the numbers that The Ultimate Fighter season 10 is drawing. Even the weak episodes of TUF are beating WEC title fights by 350%.
It is no wonder that people constantly believe the UFC-WEC merger rumors.
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Merge rumors that won’t happen since Zuffa just signed that new TV deal with Versus, followed by a WEC PPV in 2010. Yay!?
It’s a damn shame that more people can’t/don’t tune in to the WEC fights. IMO, they consistantly put on the most competative and exciting fights in all of MMA.
Coincidently, the match making for the UFC got worse, while the WEC’s got better once Sean Shelby officially took over that position with the WEC.
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