Paramount is already seeing a return on investment from UFC.
The company signed a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with the MMA promotion last year. And on Saturday, Paramount+ streamed its first UFC card under the new agreement. Nearly five million viewers tuned in for Paramount’s maiden voyage into UFC, a massive number for the fight promotion which has traditionally aired behind hefty pay-per-view fees.
According to a report by James Faris of Business Insider, that audience is good for the second most-watched live event in the history of Paramount+. But perhaps more importantly than the event’s streaming audience was the number of subscriptions it drove for Paramount+. Faris reports that UFC 324 generated about one million new subscribers to Paramount+, the second-largest day of signups for the streamer in its history. Both superlatives are second only to non-exclusive NFL games that were simulcast on the streaming service.
Paramount executive Dane Glasgow informed employees of the subscription surge during a town hall meeting Tuesday morning. When reached by Business Insider to confirm the subscription figure, a Paramount spokesperson said, “Those numbers are unverified, and it’s against our policy to share speculative data externally.”
Even if those figures are only directionally correct, it bodes well for Paramount. UFC’s debut on ESPN+ in 2019 generated about 500,000 signups for the Disney-owned streamer. Those events still required an additional pay-per-view payment in addition to the ESPN+ subscription, however, making it difficult to compare the two figures.
A more recent comparison would be the recent Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight on Netflix in November 2024. That fight secured 1.4 million new subscriptions for Netflix according to data firm Antenna.
New Paramount CEO David Ellison, who spearheaded the deal shortly after taking charge of the company, sent a celebratory memo to employees which said in part, “I’ve heard from several executives at TKO/UFC, and they also could not be more pleased with how everything came together. It was a fantastic start to our 7-year partnership!”
For a deal that was criticized by some as an overpay from Paramount when it was announced, the company seems pleased with the early returns.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.