Ultimate Fighting Championship continued its broadcast momentum on CBS, drawing its largest linear TV audience in nearly a decade with its second outing on the network.
Saturday’s UFC 327 averaged 2.65 million viewers across a two-hour window, which included the end of the prelims and the opening hour of the main card. That figure marks the promotion’s biggest linear audience since its UFC on FOX 22 broadcast in December 2016 (3.18 million viewers), and an increase from the 2.47 million recorded for UFC 326 last month.
The main card portion delivered a 1.4 rating and averaged 2.77 million viewers, peaking at 3.14 million. Prelims posted a 1.3 rating with 2.52 million viewers. These figures exclude streaming audiences on Paramount+, which carried the main event between Carlos Ulberg and Jiri Prochazka exclusively.
The results highlight a shift in UFC’s distribution model. Under its new rights agreement, portions of main cards are now airing on linear television — a departure from the previous pay-per-view–only approach for numbered events. However, full main events remain exclusive to streaming.
For the week, UFC on CBS ranked as the most-watched sports broadcast outside of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and The Masters, outperforming competing programming such as Major League Baseball on FOX (2.13 million viewers).
Across its first two CBS broadcasts, UFC is now averaging 2.56 million viewers — a sharp increase compared to its 2025 linear TV average of 661,000, which was largely driven by lower-profile Fight Night cards on cable platforms like ESPN.