The Ultimate Fighter: Live continues to put up pedestrian TV ratings in North America, but the news is better for its Brazilian counterpart. After pulling in 1.3 million viewers on average for the debut episode of TUF: Live on FX (and 1.1 million viewers for the second episode), last week’s third installment drew 1.2 million sets of eyeballs. While these numbers aren’t horrible (and certainly were hurt by going up against the NCAA basketball tournament), and Dana White is trying to put a positive spin on it, they are lower than the 1.5-1.8 million viewers TUF averaged in its previous incarnations on Spike. And it is far lower than the 3 million viewers White predicted the show would get on FX.
However, down in the motherland of the sport, the reception, just like the weather, is much warmer. The initial offering of The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil (coached by Wanderlei Silva and Vitor Belfort) got 8 million viewers, showing once and for all that Brazilians, and not Canadians, are the “ultimate” fans of the sport.
Update: Dana White (the unbiased, totally reliable source of information that he is) has stated that the debut episode of TUF: Brazil actually got 12 million viewers.
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