It was fun while it lasted for Power Slap League on network television.
Earlier today (Mon., March 13, 2023), MMA Fighting confirmed with TBS that Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President, Dana White’s, Power Slap experiment will no longer air on the channel after just one season. White later announced the news on his social media platforms.
“It’s official, everybody. Rumble is now the exclusive home of Power Slap,” White said in a Twitter video. “Season two and three of Road To The Title will air there and we’re also gonna do eight live events over the next two years with Rumble. Everybody in the world can access Rumble. All you have to do is download the app on your smart TV or go to Rumble.com. We will see you on Rumble.”
Power Slap’s live championship event took place this past weekend (March 11, 2023) inside the UFC Apex facility, airing on the Rumble app after TBS aired the regular season finale earlier in the week (March 8, 2023).
White’s slap-fighting project launched in January 2023 on TBS, airing at 10 p.m. EST. The final episode drew an average of 220,000 viewers with a .05 rating in the coveted 18-49-year-old demographic. Numbers throughout the season fluctuated and gradually dropped with each episode.
Despite the TV numbers being less than satisfying, White expressed his content with how incredible the project has done on social media platforms, claiming Power Slap to double UFC and other sports online. Even when it comes to the TV ratings, the UFC boss didn’t think they should have received the kind of flack they have.
“There was a lot of criticism about the TV ratings,” White said at the Power Slap championship post-fight press conference. “People are so full of s— it’s f—ing — first off, what do any of these people know about TV ratings, number one. And like I told ya, the thing averaged 375,000 viewers on TBS with zero advertising from the network. Zero. We held 50 percent of the AEW (All Elite Wrestling) audience.
“And the night that Kyrie [Irving] moved over to [the] Dallas [Mavericks] and Dallas played the [Los Angeles] Clippers, that was on ESPN,” he continued. “What had more publicity and attention than Kyrie moving to Dallas? That had 575,000 viewers. We did 317,000 at the exact same time. They were on ESPN, we’re on TBS. We were number two with men on all television, they were number one.
“That’s an incredible number, especially when this thing skews younger, and none of these people watch TV,” he concluded. “These kids don’t watch TV, none of them. They watch on their phones or the computer.”