Headlined by Eduard "Landslide" Folayang and Ev "E.T." Ting, "ONE Championship: Kings of Destiny" is the most watched mixed martial arts show in the Philippines. The MMA event took place on April 21 at the SM Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City, Philippines.
Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike filled the 20,000-capacity venue to witness how Folayang defended his ONE Lightweight World Championship title against Ting. Folayang's fellow Team Lakay fighters Honorio "The Rock" Banario, Kevin "The Silencer" Belingon, Danny "The King" Kingad and Gina "Conviction" Iniong also defeated their respective opponents Jaroslav Jartim, Toni Tauru, Muhammad Aiman and Natalie Hills.
Like Team Lakay, ONE Championship was also a winner during the "ONE Championship: Kings of Destiny" event. In the Philippines' television history, the show garnered 26 percent peak ratings share, beating Ultimate Fighting Championship's TV best of seven percent when it aired the lightweight championship fight between Conor McGregor and Eddie Alvarez in November 2016.
"I am very happy with the turnout," ONE Championship chairman Chatri Sityodtong said. "For perspective, last year, UFC 205 did a roughly six to seven percent ratings share in the Philippines."
"Numbers don't lie," Sityodtong added. "We broke all records with a 26 percent peak TV ratings share as per Nielsen. Those numbers are massive. It means one in four Filipinos who were watching TV was watching ONE Championship."
ONE Championship has seen incredible growth rates over the past three years not only in television viewership but also in social media engagement. The MMA organization headquartered in Singapore has shown exponential growth from 2014 to 2017 (Q1) according to the data released by Nielsen, Facebook and Repucom.
The free-to-air broadcast hours of ONE Championship per country per year has recently increased. It exploded from roughly 50 hours per broadcaster per country in 2016 to a maximum of 1800 hours per year for its top broadcaster in 2017 based on annualized Q1 2017 actual results, according to Sityodtong.
On May 9, Tuesday, ONE FC held a Team Lakay Media Day event at Vikings Venue, SM Mall of Asia Bayside in Pasay City, Philippines. Here is a clip from the event: