This past weekend, the UFC held Ultimate Fight Night 37: Gustafsson vs Manuwa from London’s O2 Arena. The main event aired on the United Kingdom’s Channel 5 network, a first for the UFC in the market, which holds a 4.4% share of total monthly TV viewers in the UK.

According to British TV website, DigitalSpy, 591,000 (3.01%) tuned in to see the main event between Alexander Gustafsson and Jimi Manuwa at 9PM. At 8PM, an episode of NCIS drew 629,000 (2.73%) served as a lead in for the UFC main event. As for viewership from other networks during the same time-slot, Channel 4 drew 630,000 viewers (4.35%) for an airing of X-Men: The Last Stand. BBC Four airing of “Salamander” drew 852,000 viewers (3.9%). ITV3 aired an “Endeavour”, which drew 799,000 viewers (4.07%). BBC Three’s airing of comedy “Blades of Glory” drew 606,000 viewers (3.06%). UFC’s UFN 37 main event had the lowest viewership and share percentage compared to the listed network competitors above for the 9PM time-slot.

Numbers for the entire card, which aired on BT Sport 2, are not yet known, but UFC events on the network typically do less than 50,000 viewers. Highest rated event to date was UFC 167: GSP vs Hendricks, which drew 54,000 viewers. The previous UFC event which took place in the UK (UFN 30: Machida vs Munoz from Manchester) and aired on BT Sport 2 drew 32,000 viewers.

In terms of Fight Pass viewership numbers, it is estimated that a couple of hundred thousand viewers signed up for Fight Pass. MMAPayout has estimated the fight pass viewership range for this event to be around 100,000-200,000 streamers, which is around the same range as the most watched streamed fight on Facebook before this event (Ben Henderson vs Clay Guida). Interestingly enough, it is also around the same range as Fuel TV (FOX Sports 2) historical viewership numbers.

Payout Perspective:

The UFC event did decent numbers for its network debut on Channel 5, but came up short from being a great debut. It was beaten by most of the Channel 5’s major competitors for the time-slot and paled in comparison to previous boxing events aired on the network. Tyson Fury vs Dereck Chisora in 2011 drew 2.26M viewers and peaked at at 2.9M viewers. Tyson Fury vs Kevin Johnson on December of 2012 drew 1.25M viewers and peaked at 1.63m. In April 2013, Tyson Fury vs Steve Cunningham drew 1.5M viewers. Also last year, a boxing bout between Kid Galahad vs James Dickens drew 858,000 viewers on the network. In comparing both numbers, keep in mind that boxing in the UK is much more mainstream and popular than MMA.

In terms of MMA comparisons on the network, UK’s local MMA promotion, BAMMA, debuted on Channel 5 with BAMMA 6. That show was headline by Tom Watson vs Ninja Rua in 2012 and drew 500,000 viewers.