Let the viewership discourse begin.
The UFC threw ample gasoline on the flame on Friday with a press release touting 34 million global viewers for its UFC Freedom 250 event on June 14 from the South Lawn of the White House.
The breakdown of the viewership requires some scrutiny and context to be fully transparent. The promotion is taking the previously released number of 17 million viewers from the Paramount streaming audience in the U.S. and Latin America. That figure is not apples-to-apples to a typical Nielsen-reported audience you are accustomed to, which reports the “average” viewership over the course of a program.
The 17 million figure represented device log-ins that watched at least one minute of the multi-hour broadcast with an average of 7 million viewers in the U.S. and 1.2 million in Latin America, which was based on Nielsen data in the U.S. and Adobe Analytics in Latin America.
The worldwide figure includes viewership from Australia, China, India, South Korea, New Zealand, and the U.K. The UFC cites its data coming from “an aggregate of internal and external data from its broadcast partners” along with UFC Fight Pass viewership, and pay-per-view buys in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It adds, “A portion of global viewership is also modeled on the past performance of comparable UFC events broadcast in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and Sub-Saharan Africa. All numbers are P2+, representing viewers age two or older”.
It is not clear if the worldwide audience is based on the same metrics as the U.S. & Latin American audience that tuned in for at least one minute.
The press also cautions that the final global viewership is based on “audience data from certain markets finalized seven to 10 days after live events air”, which isn’t how traditional viewership is reported with a wider viewing period. In contrast, the numbers reported for the Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano on Netflix were based on the live viewership and the following 24 hours (Live +1). The May 16 card from the Intuit Dome averaged 9.3 million viewers in the U.S. and peaked at 11.6 million for the main event, while the global audience averaged 12.4 million and peaked at 17 million during the women’s fight. The Netflix card was not rated by Nielsen, but instead, by VideoAmp.
The UFC states the audience will be even larger once Spain and France report their viewership over the next month. The two regions had significant representation on the card in Ilia Topuria and Ciryl Gane.
