Bellator 87 Averages 705,000 Viewers for Thursday Night Spike TV Broadcast

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Bellator’s third event of Season 8 averaged 705,000 viewers for its two-hour live broadcast Thursday night on Spike TV.

Sherdog.com confirmed the viewership figure with an industry source, who also verified than an immediate replay of the program netted an additional 323,000 observers, bringing the cumulative viewership to nearly 1.03 million for the four-hour block. Additionally, the live broadcast earned ratings of 0.6 in both the household and M18-34 categories.

Bellator 87 took place Jan. 31 at the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Mount Pleasant, Mich., and featured the lightweight tournament quarterfinals. David Rickels topped Lloyd Woodard in the evening’s main event, taking a hard-fought unanimous decision from “Cupcake” to advance to the Season 8 semifinals alongside Will Brooks, Saad Awad and Alexander Sarnavskiy.

The average viewership figure marks another slight decline for Bellator, as its first two efforts on Spike TV netted 938,000 and 812,000 observers, respectively. Bellator’s premiere featured lightweight champion Michael Chandler and featherweight king Pat Curran successfully defending their titles, while the following week’s Bellator 86 saw Ben Askren retain his welterweight strap and Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal advance to the light heavyweight round of four.