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2007 NYE ratings
By Zach Arnold | January 2, 2008
According to Sports Navigator:
Hustle drew a 4.0% rating on TV-Tokyo.
K-1’s Dynamite event drew the following:
6:00-8:30 PM - 11.1%
8:30-11:00 PM - 14.7%
11:00-11:34 PM - 11.1%
In other words, not very strong across the board.
Kohaku (Red & White Music Festival) drew a 32.8% rating in part one and 39.5% rating in part two of their night-long show on NHK. The Kohaku ratings were the second-lowest of all time.
Topics: HERO's, Japan, K-1, M-1, MMA, Media, PRIDE, Pro-Wrestling, Zach Arnold | | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
I’m not surprised, it was a pretty much terrible show.
Not that the Kohaku was any better…
hustle was a load of crap and hopefully disappears without a trace
K1’s terrible ratings show how tough things are looking for k1 this year.
the most interesting thing is that the ratings for K1 dropped off after 11pm which was when the Fedor and Akiyama fights were being broadcast
so, fedor’s appeal in Japan, even fighting HCM, was pretty low
Hopefully K-1 just turns over the reigns of their MMA promotions to the former Pride staff and just stay away…
I have never watched a Hustle show and never will. Roll on Jan 4th!!
Does the Hustle rating mean the pro wrestling show or yarennoka too ?
Fedor is known by Pride fans not K-1 fans. They are a different bunch of people. Pride fans are either hardcore fight fans are young people caught up in the recent trendy event.
K-1 fans are people’s parents and people who have only a secondary interest in fighting, alone with a much smaller hardcore fan base.
Wrt the ratings it should be noted that a few years ago the Black and White music show was doing > 50% of the ratings. Pride and K-1 have managed to hack in to that.
The Hustle rating is just for the pro-wrestling. The Yarennoka show was only on PPV.
Considering the fact that many of us are actual MMA fans, the K-1 event wasn’t good in that respect. While I was watching it, I didn’t even think the casual viewer would give a crap either. Looks like that was the concensus.
PRIDE and K-1 would capture about 1/3 of the TV share combined on NYE events and PRIDE had the bigger share no? At least that’s what I’ve read on a Sherdog article about a couple weeks ago. So 11.1-14.7% for the K-1 Dynamite event isn’t exactly a failure no?
PRIDE had a strong showing in ‘05 with Yoshida vs. Ogawa on Fuji TV, but K-1 has always been the TV ratings juggernaut in Japan.
PRIDE was always the better house-show company for business, but K-1 was always the dominant player for TV ratings.
11.1-14.7% range for K-1 on NYE is not great at all, no. Their ratings since Ishii has dealt with legal problems and Tanigawa has taken over are declining. With Ishii going for the hail-mary now with the ‘interpromotional’ angle, 2008 is going to be a very important year for K-1’s long-term future and relationships with TV networks in Japan.
Is it possible in any sense that the tv networks could look to New Japan again or am I dreaming?
Doesnt New Japan have a great opportunity on Jan 4th to come out as the promotion who produced the best show over the New Year period?
Puro was always a strong draw (not talking just TV - but in a general sense) with the Japanese public and then the MMA craze seemed to hit with Sakuraba’s fame. My understanding was that this new MMA boom combined with Inoki’s attempt to create a NJPW-mma hybrid (like the old UWF), but which stupidly led to NJPW wrestlers getting crushed in shootfights, really hurt puro and its drawing ability.
Japan seems like a culture that always valued fight sports at the mainstream level in some form (sumo, boxing, puro, mma, but now it seems that the mma (and k-1) game has hit the skids in terms of casual interest. My question for Zach (or anyone else that has the knowledge) is what is filling the vacuum now or what do you forsee filling that vacuum in the near future?
let us not react like the stock market and wait this one out!
I think it’s pretty fair to say that MMA (in Japan) has been on the gradual decline in terms of fan interest for the last 2 years.
Alien tentacle bukkake?
^ hahahaha…one can only hope! *crosses fingers*
“Alien tentacle bukkake?”
Hentai fan I take it? But this comment made me laugh though! Long live “La Blue Girl”!
> I think it’s pretty fair to say that MMA (in Japan) has been on the gradual decline in terms of fan interest for the last 2 years.
MMA as an extension of Pro-wrestling has been on the decline because they lost their hero to follow (one dominant heavy weight leading figure, often referred as “Karisuma= Chrisma”). Kosei Inoue’s convert into MMA could’ve saved this situation, but he backed out knowing he ain’t make it to the top 5 or even top 20.
Pure MMA somehow survives with fixed fan base of low expectation and low budget promotions. 10 years from now, we will still see the tickets for Shooto and Pancrase sold at ticket pia kiosks. Bigger business like K-1 should find it necessary to further explore Asian market (Shanghai, Bangkok, New Dheli, in addtion to Seoul and HK) to remain big.
As long as DEEP is around, we will have good Japanese MMA to watch. Matches like Sakurai vs Chonan are good for the Japanese MMA scene, and they are big for the important fans….and it is those fights that I look forward to.
“the most interesting thing is that the ratings for K1 dropped off after 11pm which was when the Fedor and Akiyama fights were being broadcast
so, fedor’s appeal in Japan, even fighting HCM, was pretty low”
The Misaki-Akiyama fight happened well before 11 pm Japanese time. The Fedor-Choi fight happened just before 11pm. So if anything those ratings show that 3.6% of the TV share tuned out after Fedor-Choi was done. If you watched the HDNet Fights broadcast of Yarennoka! live, you would have seen that these fights happened before 9 AM EST and Japan is 14 hours ahead of EST. For eg it’s 2:23 AM in Japan now while it’s 12:23 PM EST.
I know that you have a chip on your shoulder with K-1 and Zombie PRIDE and rightfully so given the activities of their management, but you shouldn’t let your hatred of their management blind you of reality. It’s as if some of you want to see Japanese MMA die in favor of Puroresu. That’s the impression I get on here.
Dave2
i was watching TBS - the Japanese feed. now being NYE i wasnt taking notes or keeping time records, but i recall that Fedor/Akiyama both started after 11 on tbs
by the way, the akiyama fight was shown after the fedor fight on TBS - funny thing, that tape delay
But thanks for your superfluous advice anyway - I’ll be sure to keep a keen eye on reality. You might want to do the same with your “impressions” based on misinformation
Yarennoka! on HDNet, which was shown live, Misaki-Akiyama and Fedor-Choi aired before 11 PM Japanese time (9 AM EST). Now unless both fights, not just the Misaki-Akiyama fight, were on tape delay on TBS, there’s no way either of those fights would be aired after 11 PM. If both fights were on tape delay on the K-1 Dynamite! TBS feed, I stand corrected.
Though I still get the impression from all this doom and gloom gushing for Japanese MMA that some of you want to see Japanese MMA, which surpassed Puroresu, out of jealousy. It’s no secret that Puroresu fans are upset that MMA took over their pro wrestling in popularity in Japan.
Dave2- i have no idea what you are trying to say:-
“now unless both fights, not just the Misaki-Akiyama fight, were on tape delay on TBS, there’s no way either of those fights would be aired after 11 PM.”
???
TBS showed akiyama/misaki after Fedor/HCM - since you say “The Fedor-Choi fight happened just before 11pm” it goes without saying that the akiyama/misaki fight was shown by TBS on tape delay after 11pm
it is my memory (and like i said i could be wrong), but Fedor/HCM was on TBS after 11 and so also on tape delay
while none of us will really know unless we look a minute by minute analysis of the ratings - do you really believe that japanese TV viewers would have watched Fedor (russian) v HCM (korean) and switched channels when Akiyama (Japanese/Korean) v Misaki (Japanese) came on?
Fedor is not the TV draw in Japan that people overseas think he is
btw, i am not a puroresu fan
Not being in Japan, I don’t have TBS (hence why I only watched Yarennoka! on HDNet) but I obtained a copy of the feed (commercial-free) and I clearly see that the Fedor-Choi fight ended more than 33 minutes before the TBS feed ended. And that’s not including commercials. So in reality, their fight would have finished before 11 JST. So it would appear that the ratings dropped off after Fedor-Choi. Would this be necessarily because Fedor has more drawing power in Japan? Who knows.
If Fedor supposedly isn’t a draw in Japan then what PRIDE superstars would you consider a draw then?