ESPN+ Sees Huge Subscriber Gains Thanks To UFC’s Debut On Streaming Platform

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.

Ross launched MMA Insight (previously FightOfTheNight.com) in 2009 as a way to channel his passion for the sport of mixed martial arts. He's since penned countless news stories and live fight reports along with dozens of feature articles as the lead writer for the site, reaching millions of fans in the process.