It’s safe to say that MMA fans are really eager to see Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor, and it’s great business for the UFC.
In just a matter of days, the highly anticipated UFC lightweight championship showdown between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor has racked up millions of dollars in ticket sales, on its way to becoming one of the largest gates in UFC history.
Despite reports that UFC 229 sold without within three minutes of tickets going on sale for the public on August 17th, that is not the case, but they are close. As MMA Fighting’s Dave Meltzer noted, “there were still a small amount of tickets left at the AXS ticket web site at $990 and up, as of Saturday afternoon.”
In other words, there’s plenty of demand to watch McGregor’s MMA return, and this a promising start for a fight billed as possibly the UFC’s biggest.
UFC 229 has raced past UFC 200 and UFC 129 in terms of gate revenue, but there is one show that it won’t manage to top.
Per Meltzer:
The all-time record, which this show won’t break is the one set for UFC 205 on November 12, 2016, the company’s first-ever event in New York, held in Madison Square Garden. That show set the all-time record for any event ever held in the world’s most famous arena, doing $17.7 million. McGregor captured the UFC lightweight title beating Eddie Alvarez. McGregor was later stripped of the title for failing to defend it, and Nurmagomedov became champion beating Al Iaquinta on April 7 at the Barclays Center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.
On the secondary market, the cheapest tickets, originally priced at $205, are going for $631 and up. A number of ringside seats are being priced in excess of $10,000, with $45,000 currently the highest asked-for price for a front row ringside seat. The number of tickets on the secondary market are substantially lower than one would expect for a show that has sold nearly 18,000 tickets.
It’s not been a banner year for UFC pay-per-views, but in a couple of months it looks like they’ll hit the jackpot. And assuming McGregor makes it to fight night, he’ll have been the headliner for the second-largest gate in boxing history (vs. Floyd Mayweather, of course), and own five of the top six MMA gates all-time for UFC shows in the state of Nevada.
UFC 229: Khabib vs. McGregor airs live on pay-per-view on Saturday, October 6th, with heavyweight contenders Alexander Volkov and Derrick Lewis squaring off in the co-main event.