When Gina Carano tapped out 17 seconds into her fight with Ronda Rousey on Saturday at Los Angeles’ Intuit Dome, you could almost feel the schadenfreude emanating from the legacy sports media group chats. After all, Netflix has spent the past half-decade or so attempting to disrupt the sports media ecosystem with their eventized content strategy, which relies on the assumption that the streaming company could skim the cream off the top without carrying the tonnage. Along the way, the streamer has become a legitimate contender for the sports rights that keep legacy players afloat—a frustration compounded by the inescapable reality that competing against a $376 billion market cap company is a losing game.

Indeed, just a few days before the fight in Los Angeles, Netflix picked up a new five-game NFL package. It also signed a $150 million MLB deal back in November, two years after its historic 10-year, $5 billion WWE deal and acquisition of FIFA Women’s World Cup rights. In the current environment, any perceived Netflix sports weakness—from the various snafus during MLB Opening Night (those backup dancers!) to the technical problems during the Mike Tyson–Jake Paul fight in 2024—has become the stuff of legacy guys’ dreams. On its face, the Carano–Rousey match must have seemed like the latest flub: In what universe could a 17-second fight between post-prime, 40-ish fighters be categorized as anything but a nonevent?

Netflix co-C.E.O. Ted Sarandos and his content chief, Bela Bajaria, might not have been thrilled by the match’s brevity, but the executives also knew it probably didn’t matter: M.M.A. fans would show up anyway. Moreover, the result couldn’t have been a surprise for Netflix’s top sports execs, Brandon Riegg and Gabe Spitzer, who surely knew that Rousey had won eight professional fights in less than one minute—and quick knockouts can be exciting. Fans still talk about Mike Tyson’s 30-second kayo of Marvis Frazier from 40 years ago.

In the end, the streamer’s first foray into the M.M.A. business drew 17 million global viewers, including a record-setting 9.3 million in the U.S. And the numbers remained steady throughout the night, a marked change from Netflix’s boxing cards over the past few years, where the audience increased as the main event drew nearer. (Yes, these numbers are not Nielsen-rated. But they’re what we have to go on right now.) Plus, this fight was available to all Netflix subscribers; in the past, the match would have only been available on pay-per-view, so rabid fans didn’t have to shell out $70 or so to watch it. And the fighters reportedly only split a purse of around $3 million (though the fight’s promoter said that the fighters made more than that figure).

Considering that the potential for a short main event was so high, Netflix and the fight’s promoter, Nakisa Bidarian, the founder and co-C.E.O. of Most Valuable Productions, programmed the four other fights on the card with known fighters. “That’s the fight game,” he told me. “On the main card, my thought was any of these fights outside of Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry could finish within one round… and that’s not a bad thing.”

Still, there was some prominent public detraction. Speaking at a J.P. Morgan conference in Boston on Monday, Mark Shapiro, who runs TKO, UFC’s parent company, correctly predicted that the Rousey–Carano viewership numbers would be huge. But he also described the fight as a “stunt” and worried that it was a bad look for the sport. “I don’t believe that a fight like that, just the way it played out, is really good for M.M.A.,” he said. “Netflix has a massive audience, a highly engaged audience, that is going to sample what comes up on the front page with Netflix. For them to then go to that fight and then think that’s what M.M.A. is, I don’t believe it is good for the sport long term.”

Bidarian also dismissed the grumbling surrounding the evening. As for Shapiro’s criticism, he countered that the viewership numbers demonstrated that MVP is making strides in the M.M.A. space. He’s worked with Netflix since the Tyson–Paul fight in the fall of 2024, and said that the streamer’s strategy has helped grow his business. “They know how to communicate to their customers,” he said. “They know how to get mainstream attention, and their execution capabilities are second to none because they have the resources to deliver.”

On NFL deals: “When the contractual ‘out’ comes up in the NFL media contracts at the end of the decade, do the networks have a right to walk? Or, if they can’t come to an agreement, is it just the NFL who decides whether to walk or stick with the initial deal? The bigger question is, if the NFL exercises the out, can networks that may not want to extend just walk, or are they tied to the negotiated terms? The network calculation here is, do they lose more money with or without NFL rights?” —A sports business veteran

[Ed. note: Only the NFL can exercise the out, at which point the networks would be able to walk if the rights fee prices get too high.]

On Super Bowl ads: “I loved hearing Adam Schwartz on your podcast. It’s about time you got some of the folks with money in The Varsity!” —A media veteran

More on Super Bowl ads: “I’m with you on the cost of Super Bowl ads. I’d need to see some definitive proof that they are worth it. The only one I remember was with Matthew Broderick for some A.I. company.” —A Varsity subscriber

[Ed. note: The ad was for Genspark.]

On pickleball: “After seeing the back-and-forth on pickleball, I had to chime in. It’s bowling. It’s a family activity, a hobby, and an old-person sport.” —A sports media veteran

Have a great long weekend. I’ll be back on Tuesday.

John