At the UFC 257 post-fight press conference, league president Dana White said the event PPV sales were, "one of the Top 2 all-time. It’s either No. 2 or No. 3 all-time.”
That would put it above or below the second biggest UFC PPV of all time - UFC 202: Diaz vs. McGregor II, which did 1.65 million buys for $90 million gross. Following reports confirmed White's statement.
MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn tweeted that, "Per sources, early UFC 257 numbers are trending at a minimum of 1.6 million buys on ESPN+ pay-per-view." The subscription Sports Business Journal broke the 1.6 million down into 1.2 sales through the ESPN+ app, and an additional 400,000 international buys.
The UFC does not reveal exact PPV buy, but Dave Meltzer knows more about the subject than anyone outside the company, and in his latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscription), he broke it down further, reporting that the event was the second biggest in UFC history, just behind UFC 229: Nurmagomedov vs. McGregor which did approximately 2.35 million.
However, he noted that widespread outages could have an effect on the 1.6 million buys figure. Meltzer also wondered whether ESPN is covering some of McGregor's compensation, given that he is significantly fueling purchases of the ongoing subscription required to pay for the PPV.
That number would be a figure not including refunds, and while nobody knows the number, there were a significant number of people who asked for and got refunds. The ESPN+ number is legit. The international number is an estimate and an extremely generous one, but even at 1.5 million, the show was a huge success. Only the biggest boxing matches in history have ever topped it, and nothing but boxing and the one UFC fight in the history of PPV have ever even been in the ballpark.
The U.S. PPV revenue would have been roughly $84 million, so ESPN’s $200 million purchase of the rights for the year looks like a steal now. An interesting question, given the nature of the revenue, is if ESPN is kicking any money into McGregor or if it’s all coming from UFC, since the windfall he’s bringing is going to ESPN. UFC got a huge figure from the Abu Dhabi government for its three shows over eight days, largely based on bringing in McGregor.
The last McGregor fight had 500,000 on ESPN+ and this number should have been substantially bigger since it was a bigger fight and the homes with ESPN+ have gained tremendously over the past year. The one criticism of Nielsen valid is that in a case like this, where it is live on a major streaming platform, those numbers should be figured in. At the same time, ESPN did not announce the numbers, since most streaming numbers are actually embarrassingly low as compared to television, the rule in that world is to keep them confidential. This show would be the exception to the low numbers, and FOX, for example, would have reported them and did in the past (although UFC’s FOX streaming numbers were tiny).
Meltzer closed by speculating about how the loss may have affected McGregor's drawing power. He said a single loss does not hurt what he terms "super draws," but multiple losses in a row do. He liked both the selling power and chance of winning for a McGregor vs. Diaz trilogy. And he really liked the selling power of McGregor vs. Masvidal, but not McGregor's odds of winning. And Meltzer argued, correctly, that a trilogy with Poirier would do as well as UFC 257, or better.
Add in a title, and the trilogy would do better still, and would do better than Poirier vs. Chandler or Oliveira. So that's what we are likely to get. Or, in an attempt to extent McGregor's drawing power, perhaps we get the Diaz trilogy, and then a title shot; that's a gamble, but Dana is a gambler.
What do you think UG? Who do you want to see Conor fight next? Who do you want to see Poirier fight for the title that will in all likelihood be vacated by current division champion Khabib Nurmagomedov?