If you look beneath the surface, it turns out that the Netflix ratings for the Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford prize fight promoted by TKO & Turki Alalshikh were not as large as first advertised.
It’s always the initial headlines that grab all the attention, not the fine print.
What we know about Netflix ratings for this past weekend’s Turki TKO Boxing foray:
The main card broadcast drew 17.7 million global viewers.
The main event with Canelo & Crawford drew 36.6 million global viewers live, with an additional 5+ million viewers watching after the fact.
There were, at its peak, 24 million concurrent streams.
Approximately half of the viewers for Canelo-Crawford were American.
What we don’t know about these metrics is how many new subscribers this fight created for Netflix, especially international subscribers.
TKO & SELA claimed a $47M gate with 70,000+ in attendance at Allegiant Stadium.
It is safe to categorize these developments as good for TKO & Turki Alalshikh.
These numbers serve as the backdrop for this week’s edition of The MMA Draw podcast. Who was the biggest winner? Who was the biggest loser? And where does Netflix fit into the larger picture for Ari Emanuel’s grand scheme to mainstream Turki Alalshikh and make him acceptable enough to the general public?
Between Turki Alalshikh buying the rights to Wrestlemania 43 in 2027, his Canelo-Crawford fight in Las Vegas, and now flag football rights featuring Tom Brady’s involvement with Kevin Hart hosting the proceedings on Fox, the last two weeks have featured an artistically crafted public relations campaign by Ari Emanuel to boost the profile of one of his most active money marks.
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Zach Arnold is the lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw Newsletter on Substack. You can e-mail him at fightopinion - at - protonmail dot com.
Nate Wilcox founded Bloody Elbow in 2007 and sold it in 2024.
