By now, you’ve surely heard how universally, impossibly, astronomically, larger than space and time itself, that Dana White’s precious side project, Power Slap, is. If not, don’t worry, the man himself will gladly tell you all about it and then some.
More people have seen and watched Power Slap than there are currently on Earth. That’s how it feels every time White hypes up the United States-based slap-fighting product, anyway.
Alright, let’s not beat around the bush. According to UFC’s CEO, Power Slap is untouchable in terms of sport’s viewership.
“What if I did this, made it an actual sport, got it sanctioned, and put good production value behind it?” White said on FLAGRANT, recalling seeing his first slap match. “The answer is f—kin’ billions of views. Billions of views globally.
“Think about this,” he continued. “ We started this thing 15 months ago, right? Right now, on YouTube, we got more subscribers than NHL (National Hockey League), MLS (Major League Soccer), NASCAR (racing), PGA (Professional Golfer’s Association), Barstool Sports. We have over a billion YouTube views. Eight of the top 12 largest YouTube shorts against other major sports are Power Slap. Four of the top five largest YouTube shorts on UFC’s channel. We’re No. 1, 2, 3, and 4 on UFC. When you think about Conor McGregor, Ronda Rousey, Brock Lesnar, all the big stars, this thing absolutely dominates. We have more followers than every single professional sport. Every professional sports team, we have more followers than them in 15 months. I don’t know about the soccer teams, but I would say yes.”
Okay, that is pretty damn impressive. Especially in such a short lifespan. Well, that depends on how true those claims are. For the sake of simple comparisons, evaluate each entity mentioned down the list and you’ll see the YouTube subscriber counts of each as follows.
- Power Slap – 2.58M
- NHL – 2.16M
- NASCAR – 1.24M
- PGA – 1.4M
- Barstool Sports – 1.76M
Nice. No lies detected. Now, one billion is a very large number. One of the craziest realizations you can make is the seconds (time) comparison of one million vs. one billion. That equals out to 12 days vs. 31 years. The numbers aren’t as readily visible as subscriber count, but at the top of the list, Power Slap’s YouTube channel’s most viewed video has 2.9 million views with the most viewed short coming in at 369 million. A majority of the shorts atop the view count eclipse the video’s peak, therefore, White surely spoke in overall views between both categories, which is fair, so one billion is believable. The UFC channel shorts claim is also true, it’s just in a different order with a Khabib Nurmagomedov short in the No. 3 spot.
Going through the numbers of every single sports team is a lot of data. Thankfully, we don’t need to. Here are just a few Instagram follower and YouTube subscriber counts (credit to Blaine Henry for the observation).
- Power Slap (Instagram) – 3.9M
- Kansas City Chiefs (American football) – 4.2M (Instagram), 627K (YouTube)
- Real Madrid (Football/soccer) – 162M (Instagram), 13.7M (YouTube)
- Los Angeles Lakers (Basketball) – 24.6M (Instagram), 664K (YouTube)
The number count is admittedly very impressive for Power Slap as it’s just very easily watchable viral content. However, in the end, Taylor Swift is the truly untouchable one in this overall viewership discussion. End of story.
“We have more viewers than any Taylor Swift video ever posted,” White said in summary.
Swift’s Top 5 music videos on YouTube each eclipse the lofty one billion view mark with the following eight above 500 million. The 34-year-old popstar also has 283 million Instagram followers with 59.2 million YouTube subscribers. As the current Baddest Motherf—ker (BMF) champion, Max Holloway, would say: “It is what it is.”