UFC on ESPN 13 on a Wednesday night return lowest ratings ever for dedicated ESPN card

The UFC on ESPN 13 main card aired at 10 p.m. ET on a Wednesday night and the ratings for the card bottomed out compared to recent events.

According to the Nielsen Ratings System, the July 15 show headlined by Calvin Kattar vs. Dan Ige averaged just 536,000 viewers for the broadcast. That landed the UFC card at No. 16 overall for cable programming on Wednesday. The event also landed a .22 in the coveted 18-49 demographic.

Those numbers equal out to the lowest ratings for a UFC broadcast for a dedicated card on ESPN since the promotion moved to the network. The second lowest rated card was UFC on ESPN 5, which also featured a strange start time with that card airing at 3 p.m. ET on a Saturday afternoon.

The UFC on ESPN 13 prelims ended Saturday at No. 37 in the overall ratings with 434,000 average viewers for the 7 p.m. ET start time.

The UFC on ESPN 13 card was also simulcast on ESPN+, which would obviously provide additional overall viewers but that is a subscription based service so those figures are not made available publicly.

The Wednesday night time slot undoubtedly hurt the UFC broadcast as well as the late start time at 10 p.m. ET. All five fights on the main card also went to decision, which meant the main event didn’t start until much later in the night on the east coast.