UFC claims McGregor vs. Mendes PPV did 1 million PPV buys

Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

According to Conor McGregor’s updated biography on UFC.com, it appears that the UFC 189 PPV event, which he headlined, brought in 1 million Pay-Per-View buys.

The biography (h/t MMAJunkie) stated that “the fight attracted a record 16,019 fans to the MGM Grand Garden Arena, plus a $7.2-million live gate and 1 million pay per view buys, proving McGregor’s sizeable drawing power. Some 3,000 Irish fans converged on Las Vegas and left deliriously happy.”

This figure would coincide with UFC President Dana White’s confident statement ahead of the event on International Fight Week, as he claimed that UFC 189 was trending towards a seven-figure buy rate.

“It will do over a million. It’s already tracking at over a million buys,” White revealed at the pre-fight press conference. “You lose a fighter like Jose Aldo and put Mendes in and we added to the gate. This fight is breaking every record, pre-buys on pay-per-view, traffic on the website, it’s bigger than UFC 100.”

According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer (subscription required), there are a “wide variety of estimates coming from UFC 189.” He suggested that the show could do as little as 700,000 buys but wouldn’t be surprised if it surpassed the 1 million buy rate slightly.

Given that the event was headlined by a replacement fight, anything between 700,000 and 1 million buys is an impressive figure for the promotion. The last event to reportedly surpass 1 million buys was UFC 168, which was headlined by Anderson Silva vs. Chris Weidman II, as well as Ronda Rousey vs. Miesha Tate.

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About the author

Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.