It’s a number that may surprise you.
UFC 274 proved to be a considerable success for the promotion.
Sports Business Journal reports that last Saturday’s event pulled in over 400,000 domestic buys on ESPN+. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, that number stands as the UFC’s biggest one thus far in 2022.
No buyrates were publicly reported for any of the promotion’s previous four pay-per-views, which were headlined (in chronological order) by Francis Ngannou vs. Ciryl Gane, Israel Adesanya vs. Robert Whittaker 2, Jorge Masvidal vs. Colby Covington, and Alexander Volkanovski vs. Chan Sung Jung. This year has seen UFC pay-per-views increase to $74.99, which is on top of the mandatory ESPN+ subscription.
This was the third pay-per-view main event for both Charles Oliveira and Justin Gaethje. Oliveira’s previous bout, a UFC 269 win over Dustin Poirier, reportedly pulled in over 500,000 domestic buys to top off a strong 2021 for the UFC. His first main event was estimated at 300,000 buys for his title-clinching victory over Michael Chandler at UFC 262, even with an undercard lacking in big star power.
On Gaethje’s side, his UFC 249 win over Tony Ferguson was a smashing success of over 700,000 PPV buys amid the start of the coronavirus pandemic, while his title fight loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 254 did at least 500,000 domestic buys.
The next UFC pay-per-view is June 11th in Singapore, with Glover Teixeira and Jiri Prochazka fighting for Glover’s light heavyweight title in the main event, preceded by Valentina Shevchenko’s women’s flyweight title defense against Taila Santos in the co-feature.