It wasn’t an easy night for everyone who wanted to buy UFC 236 on pay-per-view in the United States.
UFC 236 represented a new era for the UFC, as all US-based customers can only order the promotion’s PPV events through the ESPN+ streaming service. This led to some customers having issues purchasing the card, including UFC featherweight contender Frankie Edgar, although he did figure it out eventually. Others received error messages, while others complained about the quality of the stream.
UFC president Dana White addressed those problems during Saturday night’s post-fight press conference, and promised that things will be improved moving forward.
“Not too long ago, we were in pay-per-view negotiations and we didn’t like the way they were going, so what you don’t ever want to do is to give us a little time to think outside the box,” White said (via MMA Fighting). “So we started talking to ESPN, the talks moved really fast and we struck a deal with ESPN. And we knew we had to pull this fight off very soon, on both sides. And we knew that there were gonna be some hiccups. Hopefully, there aren’t. Hopefully, you can get everything dialed in.
“The next one will be much better. The next one, you’ll be able to purchase right through the app. It’s gonna get easier, it’s gonna get better.”
It is mandatory to subscribe to ESPN+ in order to buy UFC PPVs. The monthly cost is $4.99 per month, although there’s a current discounted annual rate that is priced at $79.99 for one year of ESPN+ and one PPV. The actual purchase process however was limited to going through the ESPN+ website, not through a mobile app or gaming console. That’s surely one of the problems that will be corrected moving forward.