Josh Barnett (photo courtesy of Esther Lin/Strikeforce)
Stacked card underperforms on television
Last Saturday’s Strikeforce event was one of the lowest-rated broadcasts in the history of the promotion on Showtime.
Drawing just 274,000 viewers, the event ranked 17th among all Strikeforce on Showtime broadcasts, beating only “Strikeforce: Los Angeles” in the ratings. Strikeforce typically averages 453,000 viewers on the premium cable network.
MMAjunkie.com reported the numbers on Tuesday morning.
“Strikeforce: Barnett vs. Kharitonov” featured two semi-final bouts in the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix tournament. Josh Barnett and Daniel Cormier booked places in the tourney finals by defeating Sergei Kharitonov and Antonio Silva, respectively.
Despite one of the more stacked cards in Strikeforce history – featuring a slew of good bouts on the preliminary card – the event underperformed in the arena as well as on television. Official gate numbers were not publicly released, but estimates put the total attendance anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500 fans.