Netflix and MVP have got to be happy with the total viewership from this past weekend’s Rousey vs. Carano card at the Intuit Dome.
On Tuesday, MVP released the much-anticipated viewership numbers from the event, the first-ever MMA card to be streamed on Netflix. Peak viewership hit during the main event of Rousey vs. Carano, with 17 million viewers tuning in for the fight.
The final three fights of the card averaged just over 12.4 million live viewers, with 9.3 million on average watching the event in the U.S.
That’s enough to make Rousey vs. Carano the highest-viewed MMA event in U.S. history, MVP noted in Tuesday’s press release.
In addition, gate at the Intuit Dome was in excess of $2.2 million.
The fight, held at featherweight, saw Rousey, a former UFC women’s bantamweight champion, return from a 10-year MMA retirement to take on Carano. The latter was a pioneer of women’s MMA and widely regarded as its first break-out star. She would later go on to an active career that saw her land the role of Cara Dune on The Mandalorian. While there were talks of a spin-off, controversial remarks Carano made online about Republicans being censored led to her dismissal by Disney, which in turn resulted in her suing the company.
That lawsuit was later settled out of court.
Carano, who made just over $1 million in a losing effort against Rousey that saw her submitted in just 17 seconds, had not fought since 2009.