This past weekend’s UFC 324 event kicked off the Paramount+ era and delivered record-breaking streaming numbers for the service.

The new 7-year, $7.7 billion broadcasting deal sees a major shift away from the UFC’s traditional pay-per-view model for it’s numbered events in favor of them being available for the price of a monthly Paramount+ subscription, saving loyal fans a huge amount of money in the process.

And that’s reflected in the impressive viewership numbers as an average of 4.96 million viewers and a total of over 7 million households tuned in to watch UFC 324 according to Paramount, with it’s peak being 5.93 million concurrent streams.

That makes it the most watched exclusive live event ever on Paramount+, while also having reached, “more homes than any other live UFC event in nearly a decade across linear, broadcast and streaming.“

It’s apples and oranges to compare these kind of numbers to the UFC’s previous PPV model given the huge price differential to access them, but suffice to say that even in it’s heyday getting over a million pay-per-view buys was a rarity, and in recent times the numbers had dwindled drastically, often being below 300,000 sales.

However, by way of comparison, the first event of the previous era, ‘UFC On ESPN 1: Ngannou vs. Velasquez’ back in February of 2019 drew an average of 1.4 million viewers, and peaked at 1.67 million on ESPN, though it should be stressed this wasn’t for a numbered PPV-style event.

To really find comparable numbers you’d have to go back to the days of the UFC’s FOX deal, with ‘UFC On FOX 1: Velasquez vs. dos Santos’ back in November of 2011, which pulled in slightly below the Paramount+ event with an average of 4.6 million viewers, though it did peak significantly higher at 8.8 million viewers during the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it main event.

This past weekend’s numbers reflect the power of the streaming market in 2026, and appear to justify the UFC’s decision to move away from the more traditional broadcast platforms of the past.

The main card of Saturday night’s milestone UFC 324 event wasn’t a home run from start to finish, with some of the main card fights not providing the kind of thrills and spills casual fans might have been hoping for, but the main event interim lightweight title fight between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett made up for that with an entertaining five-round back-and-forth slug-fest.

There were some notable complaints from fans however with regards to the Paramount+ coverage, including the labored build-up to the first fight on the main card, which took half-an-hour, though the main complaint was the fact the event was riddled was advertisement breaks, even during fighter walk-ins and in-between rounds.

Another big event, UFC 325: Volkanovski vs. Lopes 2 is set for this coming weekend, so it will be very interesting to see what adjustments, if any, will be made for that, and whether they will be able to show they can draw another large audience now that the initial spectacle of the first ever event on Paramount+ is over.