George St-Pierre was set to square off with Carlos Condit in a Welterweight championship bout at UFC 137 on October 29, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Unfortunately for all parties involved, the current champion suffered a knee injury that would eventually lead to his dismissal from the fight card.
At the time, the Ultimate Fighting Championship knew losing St-Pierre would but costly.
But, they didn’t realize how costly.
In a recent interview with Dave Meltzer of Yahoo! Sports he discussed exactly how much the UFC would lose from St-Pierre’s injury.
Meltzer was asked what his expectations were for how high UFC 137 could go in terms of pay-per-view buy rates.
Meltzer responded by stating,
Ticket sales, I don’t know because they’re already sold out. There are some refunds so I don’t know but again, how extensive those refunds, I don’t know until Dana gives the number at the end so I was just talking pay-per-view buys. I think it’s gonna cost them eight and a half million in pay-per-view buys from a 650 to a 300 [thousand] type of drop in that range.
Following St-Pierre’s injury, BJ Penn and Nick Diaz were announced as the new main event of the evening.
Despite Penn having higher buy rates than most fighters, the UFC will still suffer one of the biggest drops in the last few years.
It is estimated that St-Pierre’s injury will have cost the UFC around 8.5 million dollars when all is said and done.
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