Update: Read the final TV ratings for this event here.

The early TV ratings estimate is in for last night’s ‘UFC On FOX 5’ event and shows that an average of 3.41million viewers tuned into the show between 8-10pm.

That gave the event a preliminary 1.6 rating amongst adults 18-49 and a 5% share of the audience, enough to comfortably win the night in that regard,.

Note: It should be stressed that these are just initial numbers and could well go up in the coming days. We won’t know for certain what the final ratings are until later in the week.

We don’t yet know the numbers after 10pm though which could provide a significant boost as that’s when the main event took place.

However, for the sake of comparison, the ‘overnight’s for ‘UFC On FOX 4’ were 2.13million, with the final ratings a few days later moving up to 2.4million.

Even as things stand ‘UFC On FOX 5’ would arrest the downward trend of recent events, beating out the previous two FOX’s shows by a million viewers which is very good news indeed.

Last night’s card had been billed as the greatest ever line-up on free-TV, with three major fights fronting the show including household names like BJ Penn and Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua (though as it turned out both men lost out to two of the sport’s potential stars of the future Rory MacDonald and Alexander Gustafsson) along with a lightweight title fight between Ben Henderson and Nate Diaz.

That, coupled with the fact that the prelims for the event were aired on FX prior to the main card rather than Fuel TV as had been the case for previous shows appears to have helped the UFC and FOX have a successful night that ends the promotion’s first year on the network on a good note.

Stay tuned though in the coming days for the final ratings though which should make for very interesting reading indeed.

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UFC On FOX TV Ratings So Far:

UFC on FOX 1 (Velasquez vs. Dos Santos): 5.7 million

UFC on FOX 2 (Evans vs. Davis): 4.7 million

UFC on FOX 3 (Diaz vs. Miller): 2.4 million

UFC on FOX 4 (Rua vs. Vera): 2.4 million

UFC On FOX 5 (Henderson Vs Diaz): 3.41 million (preliminary rating)

Props: TVByTheNumbers