A rare day for fight fans. Conor McGregor shows off actual, complete PPV buy rate for his UFC 257 rematch against Dustin Poirier.
For much of MMA history, the PPV business has been a realm of secondhand sources and inexact guesswork. What were the search metrics like? How was web-traffic for the event? Did Dana White just say over 800k buys, or about 800k?
It’s rare that we ever actually get to see the cold hard facts when it comes to exactly what kind of business any one particular PPV does from month to month. So, it’s something of a rare opportunity when someone chooses to a little insider data. And this time around, it’s coming from none other than UFC superstar Conor McGregor.
McGregor has made his name as one of the top drawing talents in all of combat sports, bringing the UFC PPV industry to new heights along with him. And even though his recent outings haven’t lead to the kinds of stellar results that fans have been used to, it doesn’t mean they’re not still showing up to watch him work.
The ‘Notorious’ recently revealed just that, with a letter from the UFC showing more than 1.5 million viewers ordered his most recent PPV event, a rematch against former interim lightweight champion Dustin Poirier.
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) October 4, 2021
According to available data, that number would make UFC 257 the fourth highest selling UFC PPV of all time. So, while McGregor may not have walked away with the win back in January, at the very least, he should have taken home a sizeable chunk of change for his portion of the PPV proceeds. Although, whatever that number might be, it doesn’t look like the SBG fighter is about to share that information with the public as well.
Currently McGregor is rehabbing a broken leg, suffered in his third fight with Poirier back at UFC 264 in July of 2021. For his part, the ‘Diamond’, is all set to take on Charles Oliveira this coming December, in what will be the first defense of Oliveira’s belt, since claiming gold with a victory over Michael Chandler back in May. Once McGregor returns to full strength, a fourth bout against the Louisiana native may very well be on the table.