Dana White said on Friday that UFC 217 would be huge. With Georges St-Pierre’s return, he says it was trending to beat the recently set PPV records in Canada. Shortly after the Madison Square Garden event ended, the UFC president says the actual buy rates even blew away their expectations.
“We’re pretty sure this beat Mayweather vs McGregor in Canada,” White proclaimed at the UFC 217 post-fight press conference.
“I told some of you guys yesterday that this would do over a million. I was way wrong. It did over a million,” he said. “I’ll have a definite answer tomorrow, but it’s looking like we destroyed it.”
As White alluded to, it’s still too early to tell the final pay-per-view buy rate just yet, but it seems to be by far the biggest selling event they had this year. With stars like McGregor and Rousey out, the previous top selling UFC show for 2017 was UFC 214: Jones vs Cormier 2, which was estimated to have around 850,000 PPVs.
With St-Pierre winning the middleweight title and still being a box-office hit, the promotion has yet another dependable big draw that can be set up for even more lucrative bouts down the road.
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