At UFC 257 this past weekend Conor McGregor made his return from a year-plus hiatus to face a familiar foe; Dustin Poirier. In the main event McGregor suffered his first TKO loss inside the MMA cage, when Poirier finished the Irishman midways through the second round.
The card, which featured Michael Chandler knocking out Dan Hooker in the co-main event, is reportedly on track to be one of the promotion’s best selling pay-per-view events to date.
That reporting comes from John Ourand of Sports Business Journal:
ESPN+ registered around 1.2 million PPV buys for Saturday’s UFC 257, sources say. SBJ Media is live: https://t.co/o6WhouUubY pic.twitter.com/9ahOJLDMKM
— John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) January 26, 2021
According to Ourand UFC 257 has logged 1.2 million pay-per-view buys through ESPN+ and an additional 400,000 buys from international markets. That total, of 1.6 million global buys, puts the event very high on the list of all-time best-sellers.
According to Tapology the top selling UFC pay-per-view event ever was UFC 229: Nurmagomedov vs. McGregor, which clocked in at an approximate 2.4 million buys. If Ourand’s numbers are true, UFC 257 now sits joint second place with UFC 202: Diaz vs. McGregor 2 for second highest selling UFC PPV ever.
The events now sitting at third and fourth both feature McGregor. UFC 246 (where be beat Donald Cerrone) and UFC 196 (where he lost to Nate Diaz). The fifth placed highest selling UFC ppv was UFC 100, which aired in 2009 and featured Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir, Georges St-Pierre vs. Thiago Alves and Dan Henderson vs. Michael Bisping.
It’s expected that McGregor earned a percentage of revenue from pay-per-view sales, a practise typically reserved for UFC champions (though, not always). It’s unknown if Poirier will be getting a cut of the buys.
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