Conor McGregor made his long-awaited return to UFC last weekend, and while his time in the octagon was short-lived, falling to Mak Holloway by TKO in just 69 seconds, the audience he drove to Paramount+ was nothing short of healthy.
According to Adam Stern in Sports Business Journal, Paramount+ averaged 6.1 million viewers for Saturday’s UFC 329 card headlined by McGregor and Holloway. With an additional 400,000 viewers from Latin America, Paramount+ is touting a total audience of 6.5 million viewers for the telecast. That figure is just short of the 7.0 million American viewers that tuned in for the UFC Freedom 250 card on the White House lawn last month.
Paramount+’s audience peaked at 8.3 million viewers, which was actually a higher peak than the White House event in June (7.9 million viewers).
Per Sports Business Journal, 20 million households have tuned into a UFC event since Paramount+ began airing the promotion in January. Paramount+ has about 80 million subscribers worldwide, according to recent data.
Paramount is in the first year of a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with UFC and, so far, the returns have been solid. The streamer reportedly added one million subscribers on the day of its UFC debut for UFC 324, and viewership has remained solid throughout the first six months. Considering the price of watching UFC has gone down considerably compared to the promotion’s previous deal, which put marquee cards on pay-per-view, things seem to be going according to plan for Dana White and Co.
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.