Why is UFC on FOX, which was supposed to take MMA to the next level, now hitting new lows?

It was the summer of 2011 when the UFC signed a new TV deal that company executives hailed as a groundbreaking move that would change the sport of MMA forever. After years of slugging it out on cable with Spike, the UFC was headed to network TV, thanks to a new deal with FOX.

“This was it for me. This is what I always wanted,” UFC President Dana White said at a press conference announcing the deal that August. “This is what I always felt was the pinnacle for us here in the United States. Not just to be on the No. 1 network in the country, but to be on a network with all the other real big sports: NFL, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, etc. It’s going to take the sport to the next level.”

And at first, it did. The UFC’s initial foray onto FOX that fall – a single-fight broadcast of a heavyweight title bout between Junior Dos Santos and Cain Velasquez – peaked with nearly nine million viewers. If the fight hadn’t ended with a Dos Santos knockout win in just 64 seconds, that number might very well have broken 10 million.

Subsequent events on FOX in 2012 and 2013 did solid overall ratings numbers, with the five highest-rated events in the UFC on FOX series all coming in the years prior to 2014.

Since then, however, viewership numbers have been on a steady decline. Average ratings in 2017 were worse than those in 2016, which in turn were down from the numbers in 2015.

Up until Saturday night’s UFC on FOX 27 event, the low-water mark was last summer’s card headlined by Chris Weidman vs. Kelvin Gastelum, which drew 1.64 million viewers (the following event, Robbie Lawler vs. Rafael dos Anjos, did only slightly better).

This past weekend’s event in Charlotte drew just 1.59 million viewers in overnight ratings – a new series low. To put that in perspective, the UFC pulled in about as many viewers for an event on FOX in 2018 as UFC pay-per-view prelims routinely drew on Spike TV back in 2011.

Ronaldo Souza head-kicks Derek Brunson in the UFC on FOX 28 main event.

Loyal viewers may tell themselves that it doesn’t matter. After all, if you’re enjoying the show, why should you care if the number of other people doing the same is 10,000 or 10 million?

But it matters a great deal to TV networks, which means it matters to the UFC, which is in the midst of negotiating a new broadcast rights deal that it hopes will fetch a huge revenue increase.

Whether the UFC gets the deal it wants or doesn’t, it could have major ramifications for MMA’s future in North America. That alone makes it worth asking: What happened?

How did the UFC on FOX go from groundbreaking game-changer to a lackluster series that pulls in about as many viewers as a “Will & Grace” rerun? And what does that mean as we head into a pivotal year for the sport’s biggest player?

For starters, you have to put the recent downturn in context. It’s not just the UFC that’s experiencing a ratings drop – it’s live sports in general.

As recently as a couple years ago, live sports were widely considered to be the last bastion of DVR-proof programming, making those properties uniquely valuable to advertisers. Younger audiences might be getting their TV needs met through Netflix or Hulu, but live sports would stop them from completely “cutting the cord,” or so the thinking went.

That theory hasn’t held up so well, as plenty of major sports properties saw some dip in ratings during 2017. Network TV in general has seen a recent decline in viewership, with FOX taking some of the hardest hits.

Some of that might be because technology is changing our viewing habits. We don’t have to sit down in front of the TV to get our sports fix, just like we don’t have to accept that whatever’s offered from the few major networks is all there is to choose from.

Plus, there are just more sports and entertainment offerings constantly competing for our attention, on demand, across multiple platforms. Whether you have an entire niche sport to spotlight or just a funny video you made with your friends, there are more ways to see and share it now than there were even a few years ago. There was a time when the UFC was a beneficiary of that trend. Now it’s another voice struggling to be heard.

But the UFC also has to bear some responsibility for its own numbers. Looking at the differences between the highest-rated FOX events and the lowest, it’s clear that the quality of the card matters.

Ratings for pay-per-view prelims on FS1 have held fairly steady, but when it comes to trying to draw millions of viewers to a network TV event, title fights and meaningful match-ups generally do better than a series of bouts that feel like the best available leftovers.

But at this stage in its FOX deal, the UFC doesn’t seem interested in pulling out all the stops to deliver a major ratings win. Last Saturday’s middleweight rematch of uncertain importance, backed by an extremely mediocre main card, made that fairly clear.

The UFC on FOX event next month is another reminder, as Josh Emmett meets Jeremy Stephens in a headliner that should produce a fun fight, but probably won’t blow anyone away with sheer star power, which in turn creates its own trend.

After years of booking FOX events like they’re nothing particularly special – the tier of UFC programming that’s somewhere below the one that’s good enough to pay for – fans almost can’t help but pick up on that message. These are not the events that really, truly matter the most. If they were, they’d be on pay-per-view, which is where MMA’s actual game-changers happen.

This has to be a consideration for potential TV partners. The difference between UFC on FOX 1 and UFC on FOX 27 illuminates just how much variance there can be in the quality of the product that the UFC chooses to put on network TV.

The opportunity to showcase MMA’s best on network TV? Maybe that can still be a groundbreaking, game-changing, can’t-miss proposition. But one thing the FOX deal has shown is that a broadcast deal with the UFC doesn’t guarantee a network the full power of the UFC machine.

For more on the upcoming UFC schedule, visit the UFC Rumors section of the site.