The ratings are in for GLORY 19 and they are quite good.
The world's leading kickboxing promotion put on its ninth fight card on Spike TV last Friday night (Feb. 6, 2015) and 542,000 viewers tuned in to see Nieky Holzken win the welterweight contender tournament, as well as Rico Verhoeven retain his heavyweight title against Errol Zimmerman (full results here).
The Hampton, Virginia event pulled in the second-highest number of viewers out of the nine televised fight cards on Spike TV and was only the second fight card to break 500,000 viewers. GLORY 13 in Tokyo is the highest all time with 659,000 viewers. The numbers for GLORY 19 are over a 50-percent increase from the disappointing GLORY 18, which drew just 352,00 viewers.
GLORY 19 peaked at 825,000 viewers, which is third all time behind GLORY 17 (862,000), and GLORY 13 (905,000).
Here are the most viewed GLORY cards from top to bottom:
1. GLORY 13 Tokyo 659,000 viewers
2. GLORY 19 Virginia 542,000 viewers
3. GLORY 16 Denver 498,000 viewers
4. GLORY 14 Zagreb 495,000 viewers
5. GLORY 17 Los Angeles 482,000 viewers
6. GLORY 12 New York 476,000 viewers
7. GLORY 11 Chicago 381,000 viewers
8. GLORY 15 Istanbul 354,000 viewers
9. GLORY 18 Oklahoma 352,000 viewers
This is great news for the promotion and for stateside kickboxing fans, especially after GLORY 18 pulled in the lowest numbers in the promotion's history. A near five-month absence after GLORY 17 didn't help the cause with that event.
Now that the promotion has the ball rolling again and GLORY 20 in Dubai is lined up with a middleweight tournament and two title fights, the numbers could continue to make strong improvements the next time out.