Strikeforce "Barnett vs. Kharitonov" draws second lowest rating for major Strikeforce event on Showtime with 274,000 viewers

By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

The first two events in the Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix series brought the two largest audiences for Strikeforce events to Showtime. Saturday's semifinal event, however, came near the lowest viewership for a major Strikeforce event on the network.

Saturday's card, which was headlined by the semifinal bout between Josh Barnett and Sergei Kharitonov, averaged just 274,000 viewers for Showtime, according to a report from MMAJunkie.com. That number brought the event ahead of only the "Strikeforce: Los Angeles" card that aired in the middle of the week and brought just 164,000 viewers.

It was significantly below Strikeforce's average viewership on Showtime, and is the only event this year to go below 412,000 viewers on average.

Penick's Analysis: The major UFC news of the last month made this card an after thought, and it really did get lost in the shuffle with everything else that has been going on. With a poor main event in the last quarterfinal card between Alistair Overeem and Fabricio Werdum, along with the loss of Overeem from the tournament altogether, this card wasn't going to draw well at all, but with such a low viewership and reports of only 1,500 in attendance in the arena in Cincinnati, this was an absolute bust and a big money loser for Zuffa considering the payroll for the event. It's a sign of what is the inevitable demise of Strikeforce, as Zuffa is bringing the top draws over to the UFC, and Showtime isn't likely to extend the television contract for Strikeforce events with numbers like this to close it out.

Source: http://www.mmatorch.com/artman2/publish/Affliction2/article_10476.shtml

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