It appears that the UFC era on ESPN got off to a strong start on Saturday night, with the network’s streaming platform ESPN+ gaining 568,000 new subscribers on Friday and Saturday night.
The service received 525,000 new subscribers on Saturday along in the lead-up to the event, which saw early prelims being streamed on ESPN+, and then later on the main card headlined by a flyweight superfight between Henry Cejudo and TJ Dillashaw also being aired on it.
It should however be stressed that there is a free seven-day trial for new subscribers and so it remains to be seen how many will now stick around beyond that at a cost of $5 per month.
Nevertheless, on Saturday night Dana White said that the uptake for the service thanks to the UFC had “murdered” ESPN’s expectations.
Meanwhile the main prelims, headlined by Donald Cerrone’s fight against Alexander Hernandez, aired on the main ESPN channel and drew a 1.4 market rating, which would make it the most watching UFC Fight Night prelims since 2013.
More statistics should hopefully emerge as the week goes on, but the only other one of note for now is that there were over 1.8 million unique viewers for MMA-related content across ESPN platforms over the weekend.
