NEW YORK: ESPN+, the premium multi-sport, direct-to-consumer video service from The Walt Disney Company’s Direct-to-Consumer and International (DTCI) segment and ESPN, announced that 568,000 fans had tuned online on its first ever UFC Fight Night live stream on Friday and Saturday. This is a record for ESPN+ across all events since its inception in April last year.
The UFC Fight Night on ESPN+ Prelims card aired on ESPN (English) and ESPN Deportes (Spanish) from 8:15 -10 p.m. ET. The telecast averaged a 1.4 metered market rating, making it the highest-rated UFC Fight Night Prelims on cable since at least 2013.
ESPN+ surpassed one million paying subscribers in just five months. It offers fans thousands of live events, on-demand content and original programming not available on ESPN’s linear TV or digital networks, along with premium editorial content.
“Our first UFC Fight Night on ESPN+ was a thrilling evening of action and a great success, with a record-setting night that continued the momentum for ESPN+, delivered strong ratings on ESPN and marks a great start to our new agreement with the UFC,” Walt Disney chairman (Direct-To-Consumer and International) Kevin Mayer said.
“It was a milestone evening, with the success driven by outstanding joint efforts from the teams at DTCI and ESPN.” On Saturday, there were also more than 1.8 million unique visitors to MMA-related digital content across ESPN digital platforms (ESPN App, ESPN.com, etc.), which was the most-trafficked Saturday for MMA content on record.
ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro said: “All day, and across all ESPN platforms, we collectively demonstrated the promise of what we can do to fulfill our mission of serving a wider array of sports fans.”
This was the first fight card of the five-year media deal between UFC, Walt Disney and ESPN, announced last year. ESPN+ will offer 20 exclusive UFC Fight Night on ESPN+ events per year and all preliminary fights for UFC on ESPN Fight Night programs. ESPN linear networks will broadcast 10 exclusive UFC on ESPN Fight Night events per year as well as Prelim fights for UFC pay-per-view events.
