Back in August, when Paramount Skydance inked the company’s blockbuster seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with the UFC, Jesse Sisgold probably would have given his left arm (via submission) for the kind of ratings debut that the league had on Saturday night. The main event, a matchup between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett, amassed nearly 5 million streaming views, making it Paramount+’s largest exclusive live event to date. It was the most households that the UFC had reached in nearly a decade across linear, broadcast, and streaming, per Nielsen and Adobe. For Sisgold, Paramount’s head of global sports entertainment, it was the kind of splashy debut that might convince first-time viewers to seek out UFC 325 this week.

The partnership still has a long way to go before it can be deemed a proper success. But some Wall Street analysts already seem optimistic. Peter Supino, who covers Paramount and TKO for Wolfe Research, noted that “the crowd skewed young and male”—an unsurprising but welcome sign for Paramount management, “which paid up for UFC in part to expand subscribership outside of CBS’s core demo.” In other words, its continued success could translate into new viewers for PSKY’s other programming.

Meanwhile, Supino also lauded the event’s approach to advertising, noting that the “introduction of programmatic [ads] is the first step to transform Paramount+ into a competitive platform for ad-buyers”—something that reflects “Paramount’s urgency to become a more competitive D.T.C. player.” And yet, therein lies the rub: There were always going to be some tradeoffs in UFC’s shift from a hyper-premium pay-per-view event to programming available on a $9-a-month streaming platform, starting with ads—lots of them.

In November 2024, more than 100 million global viewers tuned into the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson fight on Netflix. But the streamer has struggled to capture the same audience for subsequent boxing matches, even if the numbers are still relatively strong: The Paul–Anthony Joshua fight garnered just 11.8 million views in its three weeks of availability, and was among the 100 most watched titles on the streamer during the second half of 2025, per Netflix’s most recent engagement report. And while just under half of Netflix’s boxing audience is international—much higher than the 10-15 percent of the streamer’s NFL audience that tunes in from abroad—there’s a clear appetite from Netflix’s domestic market, and Ellison and Sisgold may hope to divert some of that renewed energy to their own product.

At the moment, P+ has just under 80 million subscribers, most of them domestic. It’s unlikely that even the biggest UFC title card will generate anything close to Paul and Tyson numbers, but matches might keep delivering strong engagement in the U.S. while attracting new subscribers. Earlier today, Business Insider reported that Paramount+ added 1 million new subscribers during the company’s UFC debut.

Of course, establishing a regular cadence for these events—which Netflix, notably, hasn’t done with boxing—will go a long way toward maintaining and growing the UFC’s footprint. And even the occasional goofy sideshow, like Donald Trump’s planned skirmish on the White House lawn, won’t hurt either. As I recently wrote, leagues are increasingly turning to gimmicky events to keep viewers engaged—and what’s more American than a gladiatorial brawl in D.C. in the lead-up to the 250th anniversary of America’s founding?

Thanks, Julia. See you all on Thursday.

John