Sunday’s UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House drew a streaming audience of 17 million viewers across the United States and Latin America, Paramount+ announced on Thursday.
That audience set a record for a live event on Paramount+, according to numbers compiled by Nielsen (for the U.S.) and Adobe Analytics (for Latin America). The streaming telecast averaged 8.2M viewers across both markets.
Advertisement
The viewership breakdown for the total viewership — that watched at least one minute of the event — was 15.26 million in the U.S. and 1.67 in Latin America. The average audience during the seven-bout UFC card was 7.0 million for the U.S. and 1.2 million for Latin America.
Those figures do not include delayed viewing or viewers who watched on DVR within one day of the event, known as +1 viewership.
UFC will announce viewership numbers for audiences outside the U.S. and Latin America next week.
The seven-match card was headlined by Justin Gaethje defeating 6-to-1 favorite Ilia Topuria in the main event after Topuria’s corner stopped after the fourth round. And in an interim heavyweight title bout, Ciryl Gane defeated Alex Pereira in two rounds. UFC Freedom 250 was the first event in the promotion’s history that saw every fight end with a knockout or technical knockout.
Advertisement
Held on President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and intended to celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, UFC Freedom 250 drew controversy for being held on the South Lawn of the White House.
That required the construction of a canopy built 87 feet above the Octagon to light the event for broadcast and ensure the White House was in the background. Additionally, temporary seats had to be installed and the U.S. Department of Defense reportedly recruited troops to fill out the audience. Tickets for the event were not made available to the general public.
Altogether, the event cost $60 million to stage and UFC CEO Dana White claimed that the company would take a $30 million loss for the effort. However, that number has been disputed under scrutiny.
