The average and peak viewership numbers for both UFC Vegas 33 and Bellator 263 have been revealed.
Both events were held on July 31. In the main event of UFC Vegas 33, middleweights Sean Strickland and Uriah Hall did battle. Strickland earned the unanimous decision victory. As for Bellator 263’s headliner, Patricio “Pitbull” Freire put the featherweight gold on the line against AJ McKee. This served as the final bout in the Bellator Featherweight World Grand Prix. McKee won the fight via first-round submission.
Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports reports that the UFC card, which aired live on ESPN, surpassed the live Showtime airing of Bellator 263 by a sizable margin.
“The Strickland-Hall UFC card averaged 797k viewers on ESPN and peaked at 953k viewers during main event. Bellator averaged 85k and peaked at 177k during the Pitbull-McKee main event.”
Iole later made a slight correction.
“One correction: UFC main card peaked at 1 million viewers at 10:59. The 953k came during final part of main event.”
Bellator 263 falls well short of Showtime’s recent boxing event. The undisputed junior-middleweight title fight between Jermell Charlo and Brian Castano in July peaked at 536,000 viewers and averaged 422,000 viewers. It’s Showtime’s most watched boxing event since December 2019. This does not include Showtime PPVs.
UFC Vegas 33 could be considered a success given the amount of bout cancellations the card went through. It didn’t top UFC Vegas 32, which averaged 868k viewers and peaked at 1.3 million for the main event between TJ Dillashaw and Cory Sandhagen.
