Yesterday was fairly light in terms of significant major sports events–the first Saturday without any football of any kind (and yes, I’m including CFL and UFL) in nearly a year and still weeks away from consequential college basketball or even spring training baseball–let alone a fortnight out from the Milan-Cortina Olympics. And even one of three scheduled NBA tilts for ABC was postponed due to yesterday’s events in Minneapolis.
But in the world of combat sports, it was opening night in more ways than one. The first significant UFC event of 2026 took place in its most frequent venue, Las Vegas, and as CBS SPORTS’ Brent Brookhouse shared this morning it did not disappoint:
Justin Gaethje is UFC interim lightweight champion once again. Gaethje outlasted Paddy Pimblett in an instant classic in the main event of Saturday’s UFC 324 to claim a piece of the title in hopes of eventually getting to unify for full champ Ilia Topuria. The fight…saw wild momentum swings as Pimblett would largely control the action in the early rounds, only for Gaethje to land massive power punches that rocked Pimblett.
Gaethje, who previously held the interim lightweight title as well as the ceremonial BMF title, showed tremendous heart of his own. Pimblett landed more significant strikes overall, according to UFC Stats, edging out Gaethje 156 to 144. Gaethje dealt with Pimblett’s steady stream of offense and brutal leg kicks by returning fire and doing so with more power. In the end, the official scorecards read 48-47, 49-46 and 49-46, all for Gaethje, who was able to come close to finishing the fight in three of five rounds. That damage was enough to secure Gaethje his second stint as interim champion and hopefully set him up for another crack at becoming undisputed lightweight champion for the first time in his career.
Even to a more casual MMA fan such as moi that all sounds pretty compelling, and for a regular beat writer it couldn’t have come at a more opportune time, since it was the first chance for his employer’s parent company to showcase a main event from outside a prohibitive paywall. TV INSIDER’s Dan Clarendon had given his readers a heads up earlier this month:
Paramount+ just added a major “plus” for fans of mixed martial arts. Come Saturday, January 24, 2026, the streaming service will be the exclusive home of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) events in the United States and Latin America. Now, instead of paying to watch each bout on pay-per-view television, UFC devotees can subscribe to Paramount+ to see every marquee numbered event and all Fight Nights. The new arrangement comes after TKO Group Holdings, UFC’s parent company, announced a $7.7 billion deal with Paramount, a Skydance corporation, this August. Fans will no longer need to use pay-per-view to watch UFC bouts. Starting January 24, Paramount+ subscribers will be able to watch UFC’s full slate of 13 marquee numbered events and all 30 of UFC’s 2026 Fight Night events on the streaming service, with no extra charge on top of their Paramount+ subscriptions, as the service explains.
It’s not like UFC hasn’t been a part of weekend sports plans before; indeed, per our beloved US TVDB site we can ESPN devoted 23 such Saturdays over the course of a little more than four years between spring 2022 and summer 2025 to the undercards for the numbered marquee events as a drumroll to a $79.95 PPV climax at the end of the evening, which typically would air at 10 pm or later on the East Coast. Even without the marquee matchup, they averaged a notch over 1 million viewers, roughly half of which are adults under 50. And because each of those marquee events comes in at well over four hours apiece that translates to an awful lot of streaming views and viewing minutes for a service that will eagerly crow about what they consider to be outsized success with LANDMAN, whose season two finale clocked in last week at 14.8 million global views over its first 48 houts and was shamelessly touted as “#1 in streaming” this presents as robust an opportunity for the struggling site to actually make material gains in viewership, reach and subscriptions. Suffice to say not a lot of existing CBS or even LANDMAN viewers are UFC fans and/or under 50.
Which explains why Paramount was willing to pony up $7.7 billion over seven years, the first significant expenditure of the overreaching Skydance corporation. But also underscores why there’s so much risk. Hard data on actual buys for main events is difficult to track down; the wesbite Tapology cites some data from 2021 that guesstimates that at that point UFC events were averaging in the range of 300,000 per, which would translate to about 500,000 viewers–or half the number of a more widely available undercard. And more recent intel provided by MMA MANIA’s Jesse Holland last August would seem to indicate that arrow has trended in a southernly direction:
ESPN paid UFC less money in [fiscal] Q3 of 2025 than Q3 of 2024 because of lower average buys per event,” analyst Robert Joyner wrote on social media. “Translation: already bad PPV numbers got worse, year over year. UFC needs a superstar for these numbers to recover, with none in sight.”…UFC’s existing deal with the “worldwide leader in sports,” (was) often been compared to a “bad marriage” with finger pointing in both directions.
The seminal question remains if the sport and the platform can fully recoup or improve upon the amount of guaranteed cache even a declining PPV footprint brought in. Back-of-the-napkin math indicates about $24 million per event. Paramount Plus is priced at $9 per month with ads; $14 without–a fraction of the PPV price in any case. Can the combination of more eyeballs, commercial inclusion and incremental subscriptions offset such a considerable gap? Given that the metrics of consequence can vary and clearly Paramount isn’t motivated to be fully transparent we may not quite get a concrete answer.
Which is all the more reason why when recaps like the one that ESSENTIALLY SPORTS’ Sudeep Sinha dropped early this morning more than a few eyes were opened a tad wider:
UFC 324 just wrapped up—the event had some issues in the beginning…(T)he broadcast featured several ads to offset costs, but some of them aired at questionable moments—appearing during fighters’ octagon walks or while they were in their corners. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t sit well with fans. When asked about the issue, Dana White explained the rationale behind the decision. “I haven’t seen it yet,” White said during the post-fight press conference. “All this is a work in progress. It’s $8.99. You are not f—king paying however much more [than before]. These guys gotta make some money too.” That, however, wasn’t the only concern White addressed regarding the live stream.
For fans who place bets on UFC fights live, watching the action in real time is crucial. Many viewers have noticed a delay between what’s happening live and what appears on the stream. White touched on this issue as well, stating that the delay isn’t significant enough to impact betting decisions. “Depending on how bad the delay is, you probably wouldn’t be able to live bet,” White later added during the presser.
Hence we are that much more apt to see the sorts of unlikely promotional meldings like the appearances of UFC talent during the Golden Globes; one can only imagine the likely ubiquity of them once the actual CBS schedule kicks in after the Winter Olympics. With enough veneer and varnish to make even these savages seem appealing to a lover of MATLOCK and ELSBETH.
It’s an uphill battle to be sure, hence it was more than a tad ironic that last night’s debut got some unexpected competition from the best-in-class streamer Paramount Plus is chasing, as DEADLINE’s Natalie Oganesyan reported:
World-renowned free solo climber Alex Honnold has successfully summited Taiwan’s Taipei 101 in just over an hour and thirty minutes, accomplishing his lifelong dream and setting a record for the tallest urban free solo climb in the world. Netflix‘s Skyscraper Live event, originally planned to air in real time yesterday, was pushed to this evening Pacific Time due to poor weather conditions.
That may or may not have cut into the upside for UFC 324, but will at least help provide a crutch for the narrative we will see unfold which likely as much drama and angst as UFC storylines themselves. Maybe it will turn about to be a reminder that if Honnold can scale such a monolith, so can Paramount Plus. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?
Courage…