Is professional gi in BJJ dying?

A data-driven look at professional gi vs. nogi grappling matches through Youtube view counts

In how many Reddit threads are we going to endlessly debate why gi matches are boring “because f— worm guard” and why nogi isn’t better because “bad wrestling is just as bad as double guard pull” but “the pit totally changed the game”? To settle this debate, I compared the viewership data on gi and nogi matches.

We don’t have numbers for streaming events behind paywalls. However, we can compare public information available on Youtube videos. For this article, I looked at the most viewed matches and event replays from the IBJJF and Flograppling channels. I also included Craig Jones Invitational matches posted by the B-Team channel, since even though they’re not “official media”, CJI was a landmark tournament in jiu-jitsu history.

As of January 2024, the top 20 most viewed matches on Youtube are a relatively even mix of gi and nogi. The CJI live streams are by far the newest videos and have potential to take a higher rank in the future. Not insignificant though, is the age of the most popular gi matches, all pre-2018 “classics”. Of the gi athletes featured in the top 20, Meregali is the only one still active in grappling and only in nogi as of late.

Besides these top 20 videos, I looked at matches and replays with over 100,000 views. There were 173 videos that met this criteria from the IBJJF, Flograppling and B-Team Youtube channels, gi and nogi.

Gi matches make up 38 percent of this body. Notably, all of IBJJF’s top viewed videos are in the gi, even though they post their black belt adult nogi matches too. Their most popular nogi match has just over 20K views.

One possible explanation for the low popularity in IBJJF nogi views: most IBJJF nogi matches take place in a large tournament setting with significantly less media hype than superfights and professional cards. A large chunk of Flograppling’s popular matches come from small, invite-only events like WNO or high profile, special brackets like ADCC. However, we don’t see high viewership on Youtube for exclusive gi events like The IBJJF Crown, even though those matches were posted after the live event happened behind a paywall.

When we aggregate all of the views from these matches, things get a little more interesting. Gi matches posted by Flograppling constitute 46 percent of the most popular gi matches but make up 54 percent of the views. This 10 percent difference might be accounted for by Flo’s somewhat more savvy video titles and thumbnails, as well as its slightly higher subscriber count.

CJI also made a splash, making up less than seven percent of nogi match videos but more than 12 percent of nogi match views. This may seem like a small percentage difference, but is impressive given how recent the event was in the context of all-time views. Most of the high view count matches in this study are more than a year old.

Finally, I broke these matches down by the athletes. There is probably no surprise that Gordon Ryan matches garnered the most views, over 15 million. Mica Galvao, next in line of the active competitors, has about half the views right now.

Mica Galvao, Marcus Buchecha, Nicholas Meregali, Mikey Musumeci and Andre Galvao are special in that lots of people watch them in gi and nogi. Roger Gracie, the GOAT in the gi, won double gold in ADCC (a nogi tournament), but these matches were not posted by Flograppling. His 2005 ADCC run did get 200k views on Riccardo Almeida’s channel.

If the media wants gi to grow in online spectatorship, they might have to pump up a few more gi athletes. Mica Galvao is the only active gi competitor on the list above. Meregali, Musumeci and the Ruotolos have competed in the gi before but have switched over to nogi in recent years.

What can be done

It seems like the IBJJF posts matches on Youtube mostly for archival purposes, so it makes sense that there is not a huge effort put into snappy titles and attention grabbing thumbnails. However, since they are making custom thumbnails already and have someone doing social media (their reels and shorts aren’t bad, tbh), I think some base level hype could bring up views for exciting gi athletes like Adam Wardzinski. His IBJJF Pan 2023 final, for example, begs for a real headline.

Wait, so is the gi dead?

Professional gi tournaments and matches have a way to go in the media and spectatorship, but the gi as a sport is thriving in land far away from Youtube, called real life. Participation in the gi, in schools, among all ages of hobbyists and professionals alike, is growing if anything.

Just for example, the IBJJF European Championship reached its capacity of over 6,500 participants this week. Another way to look at it: 6,538 people willingly paid at least 133 dollars (up to 170 for “late” registration) to fight in their robes. That comes out to a minimum revenue of $869,554 for one gi tournament which is a little more than how much the Craig Jones Invitational reported in revenue (a little over $864,000) in 2024.

This is a longer post to be made later for a deep dive 🙂

About the data

Only videos containing at least one full professional grappling match were included. Shorts, highlight reels, “training” videos and long form “vlog” videos were not included. Full event replays were included.

My feelings about this: It was a little sad to leave out things like Flo’s highlight of Mighty Mouse’s run at IBJJF Masters Worlds and Pans, both gi tournaments and popular videos. Those two alone would have boosted the gi match view count by a percentage point or two. However, I wanted to focus purely on videos where the full duration was a grappling match or multiple grappling matches from start to finish. This controls a bit for things like personality, interviews, and other editorial variances.