Bellator 66 TV Ratings Nose Dive; Move to Spike TV Can’t Come Soon Enough

Following back-to-back weeks of season high and near season high TV ratings, Bellator Fighting Championships on Friday night fell back to the bottom of its Season 6 ratings roller coaster.

Bellator 66 drew an average audience of 109,000 viewers, which is just 1,000 more than the season low of 108,000 viewers for Bellator 61.

Bellator 66 featured a main event pitting former Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez in a rematch with Dream lightweight champion Shinya Aoki. The fight, while considered a premier match-up among hardcore MMA fans, failed to draw a relative number of viewers.

Alvarez, who lost to Aoki several years back in Japan, returned the favor on his home turf, TKOing the submission specialist just over two minutes into the opening round. Unfortunately, the fight couldn’t deliver the same knockout in Bellator’s TV ratings.

Bellator is currently housed on MTV2, which isn’t exactly know for its sports programming. The promotion moves over to sister network Spike TV, the former longtime home of the UFC, in 2013, where official from both Spike and Bellator expect the ratings to improve significantly.

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