{"id":2510193,"date":"2026-07-20T22:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T22:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2510193"},"modified":"2026-07-20T22:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T22:54:14","slug":"ufc-freedom-250-fails-to-knock-out-the-ratings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/ufc-freedom-250-fails-to-knock-out-the-ratings\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC Freedom 250 Fails to Knock Out The Ratings"},"content":{"rendered":"

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(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what\u2019s popular in streaming TV and what isn\u2019t. I\u2019m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, <\/span>please subscribe<\/a> to get these insights each week.)<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n

If UFC fans wanted one image to say, \u201cHey, Paramount+ is crushing it with their UFC rights deal,\u201d I could provide that image.<\/p>\n

Here it is:<\/p>\n

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(Reminder: this is my creation of the Nielsen Top 30, since Nielsen doesn\u2019t combine the lists or include sports. I take all three lists and combine them. Some streaming TV shows probably have higher ratings than many of the films on this list.)<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Look at that! UFC Freedom 250 is number one! It topped the Nielsen \u201cTop 30\u201d list for shows and films that made the top ten the week of 15-June.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re a UFC fan or supporter of Paramount+, that\u2019s the good news for you this week. This program topped the ratings charts for one week.<\/p>\n

Everything else is bad news, or at least a huge caveat to that story, which I\u2019ll explain today in the first part of this week\u2019s Streaming Ratings Report\u2014for the weeks of 8-June and 15-June\u2014which is a double issue since I\u2019ve been writing on a bunch of topics recently. UFC Freedom 250 is one of the biggest streaming events of the year, and super relevant to Paramount+\u2019s strategy, so it merited its own article.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s dive in!<\/p>\n

(Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen\u2019s weekly <\/span>top ten viewership ranks<\/a>, Luminate\u2019s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company <\/span>datecdotes<\/a>, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen\u2019s data covers the weeks of June 8th to June 21st 2026.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

You can find a link to my terminology here<\/a>.)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

After you read this article, if you want even more thoughts on UFC and Paramount-Skydance\/Paramount+, I did a written interview with MMA Draw. They asked me to answer some questions about UFC Freedom 250, and I was happy to chat with them. Find it here:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
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Did Paramount really overpay for the UFC? What the data tells us so far<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you know the history of American television, you also know that combat sports is often a leading indicator of the future\u2026<\/p>\n

Read more<\/span><\/p>\n

a day ago \u00b7 10 likes \u00b7 1 comment \u00b7 Nate Wilcox and Zach Arnold<\/p>\n

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I never thought I\u2019d need a combat sports newsletter in my life, but the good folks at MMA Draw publish an excellent one on UFC, MMA, pro wrestling, boxing and more, analyzing both the sports themselves and the politics, economics and antitrust issues that impact them.<\/p>\n

Check the article and their newsletter out!<\/p>\n

Before we look at the UFC Freedom 250 data in particular, let\u2019s talk about what we can\u2019t say. Namely, let\u2019s start with the lack of comparisons.<\/p>\n

First off, I\u2019d love to put a chart out comparing this fight to past UFC fights on Paramount+\u2026but we don\u2019t have the data. This is the first time we\u2019ve gotten Nielsen data about a Paramount+ UFC fight. As far as I can tell, Paramount provided data for the first fight, but it was a proprietary <\/span>datecdote<\/a> (saying it had \u201can average minute audience\u201d of 5 million \u201cviews\u201d) and then, for two fights, we got the linear viewership numbers when they aired on CBS, but no streaming data. Everything else was crickets.<\/span><\/p>\n

We also can\u2019t compare this fight to other fights\/combat sports on streaming, in particular the MMA and boxing, because Netflix also didn\u2019t use Nielsen to track those events, opting for<\/span> TVision and VideoAmp<\/a>, respectively. (This isn\u2019t Paramount\u2019s fault, but does still suck.) We also can\u2019t compare to UFC\u2019s fights that used to be on ESPN+, since we don\u2019t have any data for that, plus Disney+ didn\u2019t have marquee fights. The comparisons would not be <\/span>apples-to-apples<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can we compare to past Pay-Per-View fights? Absolutely not. The comparisons would absolutely NOT be <\/span>apples-to-apples<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t stop Paramount+, though, who bragged that their UFC events have reached drastically more people than past PPV fights.<\/p>\n

Duh.<\/p>\n

Sorry, but I gotta make this point again. A basic tenet of economics is that the cheaper something becomes, the more people consume or buy it. That\u2019s Econ 101. (Sometimes pundits call things \u201cEcon 101\u201d that are actually like Econ 210 or even PhD-level economics, but no, this is really like first or second class basic economics.) Yet I still see one analytics firm consistently say that more people watch films on streaming than PVOD proves streaming which means that the streaming window is more valuable than the PVOD window. No, it\u2019s not!<\/p>\n

Same thing here. Pay-Per-View events back in the day could be really, really, really expensive! So whole groups of people pitched in to buy them. That increased the perceived value of, say, the Mike Tyson fight. Or a UFC numbered event. So yes, the fact that Paramount+ makes numbered UFC fights essentially \u201cfree\u201d if you\u2019re already a Paramount+ member means consumption will go up. Obviously. Same for Netflix and their boxing matches. They\u2019re talking about fights that used to cost consumers, in some cases, $50 in 1996\u2026which is over $100 in today\u2019s dollars. Over 1.6 million people paid that to watch the Tyson-Holyfield fight!<\/p>\n

Again, streaming is essentially \u201cfree\u201d. Or $10 to $20, depending on what streamer we\u2019re talking about and what tier you\u2019re on. No wonder more people are \u201cwatching\u201d. (Plus, Nielsen\u2019s <\/span>out-of-home viewing<\/a> also helps these numbers.)<\/span><\/p>\n

So what can we compare the fights to? Well, the good news is Nielsen put out that the fight averaged 7.0 million viewers for UFC Freedom 250, which is a solid number for a fight. We also know the length, at roughly 4 and a half hours. (I saw different run times, but this seems to be the consensus considering it started at 8 pm, had a delay and then finished after midnight on the East Coast. If you assume a shorter run time, then yes, the total hours viewed would go down.)<\/p>\n

That means I have the two numbers needed to add this to my Nielsen database. And then\u2026I can compare this viewership to the NFL:<\/p>\n

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And, uh, not great. But also within striking distance, mainly because the runtime for this event was so long. I\u2019d also add that this event had viewership equal to a regular season NFL game on streaming, but if anything, it was more comparable to an NFL playoff or Super Bowl-esque event. And you can compare viewership to the top football games on broadcast, cable and streaming, and it\u2019s not impressive at all:<\/p>\n

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We can also compare it to other sports that week, including the NBA Finals and start of the World Cup:<\/p>\n

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Again, not great. The NBA generated roughly four times as many average viewers each game for its NBA Finals. The World Cup has similarly big numbers. Also, that\u2019s just a tiny fraction of the 25 most watched sporting events each week. The NBA, NHL and FIFA World Cup had many, many more games racking up hours.<\/p>\n

We could also compare this to other streaming programs to get an idea of \u201cis this a good investment?\u201d and here is how it ranks compared to other top Paramount+ programs:<\/p>\n

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The worry here? Well, unlike scripted programming, which has rewatchability, older fights\/sporting events have very little library value. Very, very few people are rewatching these fights, especially years from now.<\/p>\n

Paramount has also released datecdotes bragging about their subscriber numbers. Earlier this year, they claimed that the first UFC fight on Paramount+ brought in 1 million subscribers. Then, in their quarterly earnings report, they only ended up with 700K subs. Not great! They claimed they dropped lower-value international subscribers, but that\u2019s why I tend to discount subscriber additions when they\u2019re leaked to the press.<\/span><\/p>\n

I expect we may see a bump again for UFC Freedom 250, but I\u2019d caution using subscriber growth so soon after these events to judge the success, since new subs with high churn (see Peacock) aren\u2019t great either. Also, analysts often want to attribute all subscriber growth to their favorite\/pet show, and that just doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n

The biggest caveat for UFC Freedom 250 and Paramount\u2019s very first UFC marquee event is that these could be high watermarks for the sport.<\/p>\n

UFC Freedom 250 had an incredible amount of earned media coverage compared to most UFC fights. I mean, it had wall-to-wall national news coverage in the lead up to the event. (The first fight also had a lot of promotion from Paramount since it was first.) Other fights could reach this bar\u2014say the Conor McGregor return to the Octagon\u2014but they\u2019ll be fewer and far between.<\/p>\n

All to ask: is this Paramount deal worth it?<\/p>\n

In this case, I think the UFC Freedom 250 numbers are more distracting than helpful. This fight did well and compares well to other top sporting events. But we know that the first marquee event was at least a third smaller, if Paramount\u2019s own data is to be believed. And it\u2019s likely the other fights are much, much, much smaller.<\/p>\n

And then you get to the paycheck that Paramount-Skydance paid. FIFA\u2019s World Cup cost about the same for Fox, but clearly generated multiples more total viewership. (Though it\u2019s only every four years.) The NBA is much more expensive, but until the playoffs, they likely didn\u2019t pay for itself. Even still, Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video likely overpaid. So, in that context, the NBA may be an overpay that makes the UFC look not so bad.<\/p>\n

But two overpays don\u2019t make an underpay, to paraphrase the old clich\u00e9 about wrongs and rights. And looking at UFC Freedom 250 as the likely ceiling of MMA on Paramount+, Paramount-Skydance likely paid too much.<\/p>\n

Share<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source entertainment.substack.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what\u2019s popular in streaming TV and what isn\u2019t. I\u2019m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) If UFC fans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2510194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2510193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/UFC-Freedom-250-Fails-to-Knock-Out-The-Ratings.com2Fpublic2Fimages2F5546123e-4f33-4dbe-9ac1-21c1a.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2510193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2510195,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510193\/revisions\/2510195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2510194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2510193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2510193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2510193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}