The prelims for Saturday night's UFC 186 drew 710,000 viewers on Fox Sports 1, which was the ninth-best out of the 14 pay-per-view prelims thus far on the station.
All things considered, when you factor in this show was not expected to do well on pay-per-view, the show doing below average numbers wasn't a surprise. It was the lowest number of the year, also no surprise since interest in the show was far below any of the shows so far in 2015.
The last show to do less was UFC 180, which was the Fabricio Werdum vs. Mark Hunt show in November from Mexico City, where the prelims did 664,000 viewers. The record low is 436,000 for UFC 177, the show headlined by T.J. Dillashaw vs. Joe Soto. The normal level is about 800,000. Both UFC 177 and UFC 180 were estimated at doing less than 200,000 pay-per-view buys, a number that would be surprisingly high if UFC 186 came near it.
The rating peaked in the 9:30 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. quarter hour with 846,000 viewers, for the Patrick Cote vs. Joe Riggs welterweight bout.
Ratings report: UFC 186 prelims does 710,000 viewers - MMA Fighting
