Saturday’s UFC 236 prelims on ESPN prior to the pay-per-view main card averaged 893,000 viewers.
The number was a major drop from the prelims before the two previous pay-per-view shows this year. The UFC 234 prelims, before a show headlined by Anderson Silva vs. Israel Adesanya, did 1,480,000 viewers, boosted by a strong college basketball lead-in.
The prelims before UFC 235, a Jon Jones vs. Anthony Smith headlined show, did 1,339,000 viewers.
UFC didn’t get a bad lead-in, as SportsCenter that followed the NBA playoffs did 1,688,000 viewers, nearly double that of UFC.