Despite losing the headliner, UFC 234 wasn’t among the worst PPV buyrates in history.
Sometimes the ratings for the prelims of an event are an indicator of interest in the main PPV card. In the case of UFC 234, that was not a thing at all.
Despite a lack of names on both ends of the card, the preliminary card drew better than almost any event in the last two years in terms of TV ratings. But losing the PPV headliner just hours before the event did a number of PPV business, apparently.
According to Dave Meltzer of MMA Fighting, the event drew an estimated 175,000 buys.
The fact that it even did that well is likely on the back of Anderson Silva. The legendary former middleweight champion faced off with rising star Israel Adesanya in the new main event, and Anderson was likely what people tuned in to see.
It’s impossible to know whether the aborted main event between Robert Whittaker and Kelvin Gastelum would have led to increased interest, but you’d have to think it would have – even minimally.
Since the TUF boom, many shows have done worse than this on PPV. UFC 224 is the worst modern-era draw in UFC history thus far, doing an estimated 85,000 buys. There are 10 other events in the last decade that have done between 100 and 150k buys, the most recent being UFC 228 where Tyron Woodley took on Darren Till in the headliner.
So, while it’s not a pretty number, I guess it would have been a whole lot worse. Adesanya defeated Silva in the UFC 234 headliner, and will now fight Gastelum for an interim UFC middleweight title at UFC 236.