Following successful viewership for its first MMA event on Netflix, Jake Paul’s MVP Promotions is looking to do more of them in the future.
The card—headlined by Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano and also featuring Nate Diaz-Mike Perry and Francis Ngannou-Philipe Lins—averaged 12.4 million viewers globally and 9.3 million in the U.S. on Saturday night.
“I think it was very encouraging in terms of coming into a sport where there is a massive endemic brand,” MVP’s CEO Nakisa Bidarian told Front Office Sports. “The NFL of MMA is UFC. Any time anyone’s tried to replicate viewership for the NFL or the NBA or any major sport—even LIV Golf, trying to go at PGA—you never see someone be able to achieve anything close to the viewership of that larger endemic brand. And we did that with Netflix, MVP, and the fighters involved. And when we think about the go forward, it’s just really having a more systematic approach to how we deliver MMA through hopefully Netflix on a more consistent basis.”
Bidarian was previously the CFO of UFC and helped guide its sale to WME-IMG (now Endeavor). While MVP has also been making headway in boxing—including a series of one-off Netflix fights and a deal with ESPN for women’s bouts—he sees a cleaner route toward brand development in the MMA space.
