After months of hard work, Dana White and company finally turned the UFC White House dream project into reality with fireworks in the sky and seven impressive fights inside the makeshift Octagon. But for the President of the United States, Donald Trump, the spectacle he was hoping for was much bigger.

In the newly released footage from Fox Nation’s Fight House documentary, filmed during the buildup to the event, Donald Trump can be seen discussing the seating arrangement for UFC Freedom 250 with the promotion’s executive producer and chief content officer, Craig Borsari.

“Do 7000 seats here, or you could do it,” Trump can be seen saying in the clip. “There’s nothing under here. You agree that 7000 would be perfect? Where are the UFC people? Are you Dana’s right-hand man? So, he’s in a powerful position. We have an arena of 8000. What do you think the maximum is?”

“Right now, the current infrastructure we have, that goes to the perimeter, right up to the trees, is only about 2500,” Borsari answered.

“That’s terrible,” Donald Trump reacted.

“But we can go a level up and start to get into the 3500 range,” Borsari said.

“But you say you are not talking about six or seven thousand?” Trump queried.

At this point, Borsari explained that the seating capacity couldn’t be increased to the “six or seven” thousand range since there is only so much wider they can go with the arena on the South Lawn, unless, of course, they got rid of the surrounding trees, which they couldn’t. So even with the “3500” number, Trump remained unimpressed, and there’s a reason for it.

Last year, the President had claimed that between 20,000 and 25,000 people would attend the event. In that sense, it’s understandable why the 3,500-seat capacity fell short of his expectations. However, the 80-year-old eventually acknowledged just how difficult it would be for the team to expand the venue.

“My concept was right smack at the front door to the White House, build it as big as you can, you know,” Trump said in the video. “We’re a little confined because of trees and these beautiful plantings and everything else, so it’s not easy.”

Following this, Dana White also revealed that President Trump had pushed him to increase the seating capacity on the White House South Lawn.

“Well, he was the one that kept pushing us harder and harder to be able to get more seats and to get people in there,” White said. “[Trump] was pushing hard on that, and every time he would push, we would try to figure it out. But, I mean, we built basically a stadium on the South Lawn of the White House, and then I think what we did at The Ellipse is even more impressive.”

In the end, UFC Freedom 250 reportedly accommodated around 4,500 attendees on the South Lawn, with most of them being military personnel and invited guests, which was about a thousand more than what Borsari had initially projected. But the adjacent park, the Ellipse, ended up drawing more than 80,000 people, who watched the fights live on a giant screen.

Now, the President might not be entirely happy with how many people ultimately ended up attending the event, but he must be impressed with the viewership the UFC White House card generated globally.

UFC Freedom 250 became the most-watched MMA event globally

Last month, Paramount initially revealed the viewership numbers for the UFC Freedom 250 card across America and several South American countries, where the event generated a collective 17 million viewers. Though that’s an astronomical figure. The UFC’s biggest card ended up matching the peak viewership of Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions Rousey-Carano MMA event, which also drew 17 million viewers globally.

With the UFC’s worldwide viewership numbers not released back then, anticipation continued to build around the actual audience the event managed to pull. And when those figures finally arrived, the UFC’s numbers turned out to be double that of MVP’s event. According to reports, UFC Freedom 250 generated a collective viewership of 34 million worldwide. But that’s not all.

Reports also indicate that a few countries, including France and Spain, whose stars Ciryl Gane and Ilia Topuria competed on the biggest stage, have yet to release their official viewership numbers. That means the final global audience could be even higher than what’s currently being reported. With that, Donald Trump can certainly claim that the UFC White House card turned out to be a massive success.

That said, Donald Trump has already floated the idea of staging a similar spectacle once again. Dana White, however, has shown some reluctance, citing the promotion’s need to recover the reported $60 million budget spent on the event without turning a profit. But who knows? After successfully pulling off a historic event at the White House, the UFC may one day return with something even grander, with more seats, of course.