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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Bellator's second event on MTV2 in Bellator 36 last Saturday brought an increase in ratings from their fourth season debut on the network. MMAJunkie.com reports that they garnered 230,000 viewers for the night's live airing, and brought even more for the immediate replay with 241,000 viewers.
The live airing brought in 16% more viewers than Bellator 35's live airing, while the replay brought in 90% more viewers than the week one replay on MTV2.
Bellator 36 aired on its own on Saturday night with no competition from Strikeforce or the UFC, and featured the quarterfinals in their season four lightweight tournament. The ratings marked a 45% overall increase in viewership from week one.
Penick's Analysis: The increase from week one is nice, but this weekend is going to be a real test to what Bellator is going to be able to do on MTV2. Moving to an earlier start time because of UFC 128 puts it in a different timeslot, so if people had tuned in two weeks in a row to this timeslot they may not tune in earlier for the live show. How that affects ratings from there on out is what to look for. And with the UFC making the move to even earlier start times for pay-per-view in April, Bellator is going to have to find out whether moving even earlier than 7PM ET is an option.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
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