Joe Rogan makes huge UFC Freedom 250 viewership claim
UFC commentator Joe Rogan has claimed that the viewership figures for UFC Freedom 250 at the White House this past weekend were well above 150 million. Speaking on his Powerful JRE podcast, Rogan explained what he knew about the numbers of the show:
“People would like look at you like, ‘You’re working for a cage fighting organization? Why would you do that?’ Cut to 25 years later, it’s on the lawn of the White House, and it is one of the most watched sporting events in the history of the world. I don’t know what the total overall views are as of now, but I know that it was like, well over — I think it was 150 million just by Monday.
“So that’s like the night of, and then people who watched the replay that weren’t there when the fight took place because they heard about it. But between then and now, now we’re dealing with Tuesday; like, there are probably another 50 or 60 million people who have watched it.”
credit to Irish Star for the transcription
UFC Freedom 250 Viewership Figures
The numbers have not been confirmed, however if they do turn out to be correct (so over 200 million), then the streaming-only MMA card would have managed to outperform Super Bowl LX (which averaged 125.6 million viewers on all platforms – NBC, Peacock, Telemundo, and other digital channels, combined).
Prior to this, the biggest PPV buyrate for a UFC event was around 2.4 million at UFC 229: Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Conor McGregor. Obviously Freedom 250 was part of a Paramount+ subscription and not PPV, but that is still a huge number to even get close to (if true).
Jake is the Head of Audience at F4WOnline, having previously worked as a Combat Sports, Gaming and Pro Wrestling writer, successful Editor in Chief and Sports Coordinator for NationalWorld. He has more than ten years of experience covering mixed martial arts, pro wrestling, football and gaming across a number of publications, starting at SEScoops in 2012. His work has also been featured on Wrestling Headlines, Wrestlingnewsco, HotNewHipHop, The Hard Times and Sportskeeda.
Previously, he worked as the Editor in Chief of 24Wrestling, building the site profile with a view to selling the domain, which was accomplished in 2019. Jake was previously the Editor in Chief for FightFans, a combat sports and pro wrestling site that was launched in January 2021 and broke into millions of pageviews within the first two years. He previously worked for Snack Media and their GiveMeSport site, creating Evergreen and Trending content that would deliver pageviews via Google as the UFC and MMA SEO Lead. Jake managed to take an area of GiveMeSport that had zero traction on Organic and push it to audiences across the globe. Jake also has a record of long-term video and written interview content with the likes of the Professional Fighters League, ONE and Cage Warriors, working directly with the brands to promote bouts, fighters and special events.
He previously also worked for PROGRESS Wrestling, as PR Head and Head of Media across the social channels of the company.