This past weekend's WEC 47 event on Versus scored a 0.46 household rating and 373,000 viewers, MMAjunkie.com (http://www.mmajunkie.com) today confirmed.
The ratings were down sharply – 42 percent in all – compared to World Extreme Cagefighting's prior show, WEC 46 (640,000 viewers), which took place in January and benefited from proven draw Urijah Faber and a main-event title-unification bout between Benson Henderson and Jamie Varner.
WEC 45, which took place this past December, drew 330,000 viewers.
WEC 47 took place March 6 at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, and featured a bantamweight title fight between ex-champ Brian Bowles and new title-holder Dominick Cruz. Joseph Benavidez beat former champ Miguel Torres in the co-headliner, and Jens Pulver likely fought for the final time with his submission loss to Javier Vazquez.
It was a solid night of fights to mark the WEC's Ohio debut, and the WEC 47 attendance (8,345) was the fifth-largest in WEC history.
WEC events often fluctuate wildly with their audience sizes. However, this latest broadcast had the second-lowest viewership since its record-breaking WEC 34 event (1.54 million viewers) in June 2008, when Faber met Pulver for the first time. Versus began carrying WEC events in June 2007 with WEC 28, which drew 416,000 viewers.
Partially to blame for the recent ratings drip? DirecTV's August 2009 decision to drop Versus from its lineup after a dispute over carrier feeds/viewer interest. A resolution has been rumored to be near for the past month, but as of today, DirecTV's 18 million subscribers are still without Versus.
Recent WEC broadcasts as compiled by http://www.MMAjunkie.com:
* WEC 47 (Bowles vs. Cruz): 373,000 viewers
* WEC 46 (Varner vs. Henderson): 640,000
* WEC 45 (Cerrone vs. Ratciff): 330,000
* WEC 44 (Brown vs. Aldo): 414,000
* WEC 43 (Cerrone vs. Henderson): 419,000 (first event after loss of DirecTV viewers)
* WEC 42 (Torres vs. Bowles): 670,000
* WEC 41 (Brown vs. Faber II): 1,300,000
* WEC 40 (Torres vs. Mizugaki): n/a
* WEC 39 (Brown vs. Garcia): 531,000
* WEC 38 (Varner vs. Cerrone): 702,000
* WEC 37 (Torres vs. Tapia): 671,000
* WEC 36 (Faber vs. Brown): 497,000
* WEC 35 (Condit vs. Miura): 423,000
* WEC 34 (Faber vs. Pulver): 1,540,000
The WEC makes its pay-per-vew debut in its next event with WEC 48. Much of the organization's future and its upcoming broadcast plans hinge on the $49.99 offering.
Good luck though on that upcoming PPV..........................
