UFC Pleases Paramount, But Will They Grow the Sport?

UFC 324 delivered big numbers for TKO's new streaming partner

The UFC 324 ratings are in, and Paramount and TKO are declaring victory.

Per ESPN (emphasis mine):

UFC’s first fight card on Paramount+ averaged nearly 5 million views, making it the streaming platform’s largest exclusive live event since it launched in March 2021.

UFC 324 from Las Vegas on Saturday averaged 4.96 million for the main card and saw a global household average of 7.18 million, according to Adobe Analytics and Channel Partner Data.

Adobe Analytics and Nielsen also said Saturday’s card reached more homes than any other live UFC event in nearly a decade across linear, broadcast and streaming.

Most views for a UFC event in nearly a decade?

That’s interesting.

What happened nearly a decade ago?

Ari Emanuel et al. Have Owned the UFC for a Decade

Oh yeah, in 2019, the UFC left Fox Sports for ESPN in its first media rights deal under Ari Emanuel et al’s ownership, which began in 2016.

I say Ari Emanuel et al rather than TKO (the current owner of the UFC and the WWE), because TKO was only created in 2023 when Emanuel et al purchased Vince McMahon’s wrestling empire.

In 2023, Ari Emanuel et al was known as “Endeavor, the sports and entertainment company led by Ari Emanuel.”

In 2016, when they bought the UFC, Ari Emanuel et al, was described as “Talent agency WME-IMG …partnering with its owner Silver Lake Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and MSD Capital, the investment firm of Michael Dell.”

In 2026, Ari Emanuel et al, is known as WME Group after a name-change accompanied the 2025 take-private deal that Silver Lake put together when the markets couldn’t understand Ari’s vision for a company that combined talent agencies and sports properties.

That’s how we ended up with a publicly traded holding company called TKO owning the UFC, WWE, and aspiring monopolist Zuffa Boxing.

But let’s get back to that UFC reaches its biggest U.S. audience in a decade business.

What Did Dana White Say Ari Emanuel et al. Would Do for the UFC?

Here’s what Dana White told ESPN in 2016 when Ari et al. paid $4 billion for the UFC:

Reached Sunday night by ESPN, UFC president Dana White, who had adamantly denied the organization was for sale for the past two months after ESPN had reported that it was on the auction block, said the sale was bittersweet.

He said fans should not be concerned about the change in ownership.

“Exact opposite,” White said. “Sport is going to the next level.”
…
"We're confident that the new ownership team of WME-IMG, with whom we've built a strong relationship over the last several years, is committed to accelerating UFC's global growth," (then Chairman Lorenzo) Fertitta said in a statement. "Most importantly, our new owners share the same vision and passion for this organization and its athletes."

Despite the quote above illustrating the always interesting relationship between Dana White’s public statements and consensus reality, I have to say, as a long-time Dana-watcher, that I believe he and Lorenzo meant what they said in 2016.

Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta truly shared a “vision and passion” for “accelerating UFC’s global growth.”

They might not have cared if that meant destroying the sport of Mixed Martial Arts as anything other than a generic descriptor for the UFC, but they truly did want to make UFC “the biggest sport in the world” — heck, Dana was even claiming that was his goal as recently as 2024.

By then, though, it was obvious to anyone paying attention (or subscribing to The MMA Draw) that the agenda of Ari Emanuel et al. had nothing to do with “growing the sport” and everything to do with maximizing “value extraction.”

Dana White Had High Hopes for ESPN to Grow the UFC

Emanuel and his right-hand man, Mark Shapiro, are basking in the success of their $7.7 billion/7 year Paramount+ deal, but just under a decade ago, they were celebrating a string of deals that put all of their events exclusively on Disney’s ESPN+ platform.

The Spike TV and Fox Sports deals that Zuffa negotiated for the UFC were for Fight Night events only and did not include the numbered events, which were distributed on pay-per-view in a traditional open distribution model, which made events available through all major cable and satellite providers.

What did that mean for the growth of the sport?

Well, here’s what Dana said it would mean in 2019:

Dana White: I‘m going to be doing so much incredible content that has to do with all different types of fighting and unbelievable stuff with MMA.

So between us and ESPN there’s never been a better time to be a fan.

We had a 5-year deal with them now we have a seven-year deal and Ari Emanuel and I just signed a new seven-year deal too so we’re here for seven years.

ESPN’s here for seven years and the the incredible things that we’re going to work on I just can’t even tell you how pumped I am for all of this stuff.
…
For a company that wouldn’t cover us years ago (ESPN) now they love us so much.

It’s awesome and and you know for somebody like me who’s been here since day one it’s all sort of surreal. This is what we always dreamed of, we’re doing what I always believed we could do and what I hoped someday we would do.

It’s everything me and every UFC fan has ever dreamed of and every fighter…

I was on the treadmill in the gym this morning and literally they ran a 4 & 1/ 2 minute piece on Darren Till. The coverage that they’re giving fighters…. the exposure that these fighters are getting and and let’s be honest nobody does it better than ESPN does.

When they dive in and do a piece on somebody it’s incredible and the promotion that they’ve done for the UFC in certain fights already…

I mean if if you looked at the the the first big fight we really did on ESPN+ was Dillashaw and Cejudo and you couldn’t get away from that fight, so this is going to be a whole another level of exposure for these fighters.

Here’s what really happened.

UFC’s Popularity and Reach Shrank in the Ari Emanuel Era

Here are the numbers for the most-watched UFC/MMA events on American television for each year from 2005 to 2025:

• 2005: Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar (Spike TV) and Rashad Evans vs. Brad Imes (Spike TV) – 3.3 million viewers

• 2006: Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock (Spike TV) – 6.524 million viewers

• 2007: Quinton Jackson vs. Dan Henderson (Spike TV) – 5.811 million viewers

• 2008: Kimbo Slice vs. James Thompson (CBS) – 7.281 million viewers

• 2009: Kimbo Slice vs. Roy Nelson (Spike TV)* – 6.1 million viewers

• 2010: Jake Shields vs. Dan Henderson (CBS) – 3.5 million viewers

• 2011: Junior dos Santos vs. Cain Velasquez (Fox & Fox Deportes) – 9.556 million viewers

• 2012: Rashad Evans vs. Phil Davis (Fox & Fox Deportes) – 6.7 million viewers

• 2013: Demetrious Johnson vs. John Dodson (Fox) – 5.2 million viewers

• 2014: Junior dos Santos vs. Stipe Miocic (Fox) – 3.8 million viewers

• 2015: Conor McGregor vs. Dennis Siver (FS1) – 3.16 million viewers

• 2016: Holly Holm vs. Valentina Shevchenko (Fox) - 4.7 million viewers

• 2017: Demetrious Johnson vs. Wilson Reis (Fox) - 2.9 million viewers

• 2018: Nurmagomedov vs. McGregor (ESPN+) - 2.4 million viewers

• 2019: Francis Ngannou vs. Cain Velasquez (ESPN) - 1.46 million viewers

• 2020: Maycee Barber vs. Roxanne Modafferi (ESPN) - 1.77 million viewers

• 2021: Carlos Condit vs. Max Griffin (ESPN) - 1.86 million viewers

• 2022: Jim Miller vs. Donald Cerrone (ABC / ESPN) - 1.80 million viewers

• 2023: Derrick Lewis vs. Marcos Rogério de Lima (ABC / ESPN) - 1.96 million viewers.

• 2024: Jiri Prochazka vs. Aleksandar Rakic (ESPN) - 2.49 million viewers

• 2025: Joshua Van vs. Rei Tsuruya (ESPN) - 1.194 million viewers

• 2026: Paddy Pimblett vs Justin Gaethje (Paramount+) - 4.96 million viewers

Note: I’m not interested in debating the minutiae of this crap; my goal is to look at general trends, and my sourcing was appropriately quick and dirty (Reddit, Google, ChatGPT).

Here’s the same info in a graph:

The general trends are clear and align with my lived experience as a fan and blogger who has watched MMA since 1995 and covered it professionally since 2007.

The UFC/MMA peaked in absolute popularity toward the end of the Spike TV era when Brock Lesnar crossed over from the WWE and enjoyed a second (possibly even larger) burst of popularity in the 2015-2019 era when Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor were at their short-lived peaks.

But that big bar on the right must be pleasing to Dana as well as to Ari, Mark, and Paramount/Skydance Sports head Jesse Sisgold.

There was quite a bit of good news following UFC 324 as Puck reported, but they also pointed out an elephant in the room (bolded below):

The main event, a matchup between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett, amassed nearly 5 million streaming views, making it Paramount+’s largest exclusive live event to date. It was the most households that the UFC had reached in nearly a decade across linear, broadcast, and streaming, per Nielsen and Adobe.
…
In November 2024, more than 100 million global viewers tuned into the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson fight on Netflix. But the streamer has struggled to capture the same audience for subsequent boxing matches, even if the numbers are still relatively strong: The Paul–Anthony Joshua fight garnered just 11.8 million views in its three weeks of availability, and was among the 100 most watched titles on the streamer during the second half of 2025…

P+ has just under 80 million subscribers, most of them domestic. It’s unlikely that even the biggest UFC title card will generate anything close to Paul and Tyson numbers, but matches might keep delivering strong engagement in the U.S. while attracting new subscribers. Earlier today, Business Insider reported that Paramount+ added 1 million new subscribers during the company’s UFC debut.

Of course, establishing a regular cadence for these events—which Netflix, notably, hasn’t done with boxing—will go a long way toward maintaining and growing the UFC’s footprint.

The Jake Paul - Mike Tyson numbers put everything in perspective.

When the UFC (or Zuffa Boxing or WWE) puts up numbers like that, then I’ll believe they are truly focused on “growing the sport” and are truly delivering for fighters, fans, and shareholders.

Combat sports have ENORMOUS popular potential, and frankly, neither TKO nor any of their competitors (such as they are) are doing more than merely scratching the surface.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to treat TKO as what they appear to be — extremely clever and relentless value extractors who are enriching themselves greatly while being merely half-assed stewards of the sports they have monopolized.

If Profits = Popularity, Then TKO Has Really Grown the Sport

As Scott Barrett argued persuasively in his long bull’s case for TKO, Ari Emanuel et al. have been brilliant at increasing revenue and profits for the UFC.

However, fans should not fall for the sleight of hand that TKO uses to conflate ever-growing cash returns with ever-growing popularity.

That’s just not the case.

Nate Wilcox is the Publisher of the MMA Draw. He founded Bloody Elbow in 2007 and sold it in 2024.