The UFC on ESPN era got off to a strong start. It was a mostly entertaining night of fights, and the strong promotion for both the ESPN televised prelims and the ESPN+ streaming service meant a strong tonight for both services.
In a press release published Sunday, UFC Brooklyn was “a record-setting night with 568,000 new subscribers for ESPN+ on Friday and Saturday combined – over 525,000 Saturday alone. It marks the largest event and subscription catalyst for ESPN+ thus far.” ESPN+ launched last April and reached one million subscribers by September.
As for TV, we won’t have the full viewing figures until Tuesday, but also from the press release, “The UFC Fight Night on ESPN+ Prelims card aired on ESPN (English) and ESPN Deportes (Spanish) from 8:15-10 p.m. ET. The telecast averaged a 1.4 metered market rating, making it the highest-rated UFC Fight Night Prelims on cable since at least 2013.”
This means the prelims likely outdrew many UFC on FOX main card offerings, and while the Virginia vs. Duke college basketball game delayed the televised prelims, ratings for that matchup were strong and were a great lead-in. Needless to say, the flyweight belt had never been this heavily promoted until it became a champ vs. champ showdown between Henry Cejudo and T.J. Dillashaw for Cejudo’s belt. The end result was a 32-second TKO by Cejudo.
From MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer:
Between the terms UFC, Hardy and Cerrone, there were more than 1.6 million Google searches for the event, which would have been the third-most of any event in 2018, trailing only UFC 229 and 232. With the exception of Manny Pacquiao vs. Adrien Broner, which had two million searches, it would have been the best for the weekend in the U.S., sports or otherwise.
Yes, there is a seven-day free trial — some certainly revealed that they had issues with the video player — but the UFC doesn’t have another show until February 2nd, which is entirely on ESPN+. There will presumably be many who will keep their subscription for UFC content, which is set to be mostly on ESPN+ over ESPN television. It’s a promising start to a five-year deal on both ESPN’s linear and streaming services. The UFC’s first ESPN television show is February 17th, headlined by Cain Velasquez and Francis Ngannou.
Oh, and if you feared a bunch of 10 PM ET start times for non-PPVs like we saw on FS1... good news!