In a Thursday Pro Football Talk article, NBC Sports’ Mike Florio noted that RNC Chair Joe Gruters was “only off by 117.4 million” in his prediction that President Donald Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event was more watched than the Super Bowl.

Per Paramount stats released on Thursday, 8.2 million watched Sunday’s event, in commemoration of both the 250th anniversary of the United States and Trump’s own 80th birthday, on Paramount+, making it the company’s largest live exclusive event to date.

Seven million viewers hailed from the U.S., and 1.2 million from Latin America, with the UFC releasing stats from outside the U.S. and Latin America next week. As Variety explained, the event reached 17 million total viewers, “which refers to the number of unique people who tuned in for at least a minute at any point in the broadcast.”

Puck’s Matthew Belloni wrote on X of the figures, “A good number for a Par+ exclusive but a fraction of marquee sports and less than half of what MARSHALS or TRACKER rates on CBS/Par+.”

However, during an appearance this week on Fox News, Gruters, also a Florida state senator, outlandishly claimed that more viewers tuned in than to this year’s Super Bowl. As Florio noted, Super Bowl LX had an audience of 125.6 million.

Additionally, during an early June interview with TNT, UFC President Dana White shared a similar prediction, saying, “For UFC fans all over the world, this is a very unique experience for everybody; and, you know, we’re expecting Super Bowl-type numbers for this fight.”

“Joe Gruters was only off by 117.4 million,” wrote Pro Football Talk editor-in-chief Florio in his piece.

He continued, “But who cares about the truth? The truth is an annoyance. An impediment. A pesky little thing that gets in the way of preferred narratives. No matter how outlandish those narratives may be.”

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