PFL founder and chairman Donn Davis has claimed that there isn't a UFC event in 2024 that generated the kind of viewership his promotion's latest pay-per-view did.
The Professional Fighters League returned to PPV this past weekend when Riyadh, Saudi Arabia played host to Battle of the Giants. The event was topped by two inaugural super fight championships, which were won by MMA legends Francis Ngannou and Cris Cyborg.
With those two making their long-awaited returns to the cage in addition to Bellator gold being on the line between Johnny Eblen and Fabian Edwards, not to mention an exciting clash between Paul Hughes and AJ McKee, the Oct. 19 event was highly anticipated.
On that note, Davis recently conducted a Town Hall-style interview with MMA Fighting's Mike Heck. The PFL chief took questions on a variety of topics from the mixed martial arts community, including some centered around the latest action inside the SmartCage.
When discussing how the event this past Saturday night performed, Davis made some bold claims. The PFL founder said his promotion's research has shown that Battle of the Giants outperformed every event the UFC has put on this year in terms of viewership.
I can't answer the first question (how many PPV buys?). The second question (did it meet projected goals?), yes it did," Davis said. "I actually made a post an hour ago...we actually provided eight viewership goals that we put out. Almost everything on this event, I put out one hour ago. What you will see is pretty astounding global audience numbers for this event.
This event, by our research, beat every viewership number of every UFC event this year, and was very, very close to 'Ring of Fire' (Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk)...the biggest boxing event in five years," Davis continued. "Overall, the same global viewership metrics of 'Ring of Fire'. That was really something that was our stretch goal, and that's what we achieved.
As many pointed out in the comments below the PFL founder's post on social media, the graphic doesn't include viewership via pay-per-view on ESPN and DAZN and instead focuses on social media figures.
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But Davis went on to explain why a changing landscape in the broadcast and media realm means PPV buys are no longer the be-all and end-all when determining the success of an event in terms of global viewership.
Right now, economics flow a very different way. In the sports world, it used to be just PPV buys. But now, money is made many different ways," Davis stated. "Sponsorship, social media, host fees; there's an economical bundle that is very different now. So there's many metrics that matter.
It's difficult to verify Davis' claim without knowing the exact parameters used for social media engagement. But in terms of promotional accounts only, it's worth noting that the most viewed post on the @PFLMMA account was Ngannou's knockout of Ferreira, which accumulated 948,000 views.
That falls significantly short of @ufc numbers throughout the year, with one example being numerous posts during April's UFC 300 event. Of note was a video of Max Holloway's buzzer-beating KO of Justin Gaethje, which surpassed 7.8 million views.