CONOR McGREGOR BELIEVES the fight will smash pay-per-view records and Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White says it’s on course to exceed one million buys.
The UFC 189 meeting of McGregor and champion Jose Aldo in Las Vegas is now less than three weeks away, and the organisation has left no stone unturned when it comes to generating hype ahead of the UFC featherweight title bout.
There’s no doubting that it’s set to be one of the biggest fights in mixed martial arts history, but will that be reflected in the number of people who’ll fork out to watch the action live on Saturday, 11 July?
A Setanta Sports subscription is all you’ll need to see it here in Ireland, but fans on the other side of the Atlantic will require a one-off purchase to tune in and find out if McGregor can dethrone the only featherweight champion in UFC history.
Defeating Aldo is his main aim but a hefty return from the PPV market is also high on Conor McGregor’s list of priorities.
“Conor thinks he’s going to do some, you know, the biggest number ever, but to be honest and realistic, I think it’s going to do over a million,” said UFC chief Dana White, when asked about the potential number of buys for an event which also features a welterweight title bout between champion Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald.
Back in March, McGregor predicted that next month’s event would “compete with Mayweather/Pacquiao”. But with a reported figure of 4.4 million buys emerging from the May boxing bout, that certainly won’t be happening.
However, McGregor versus Aldo does look set to climb its way into the upper echelons of the standings for the most successful PPV events in UFC history — albeit not right to the very top.
The UFC doesn’t release official PPV figures publicly, but relatively accurate numbers generally emerge thanks to industry insiders such as Dave Meltzer of MMAFighting.com — who has previously stated his belief that UFC 189 won’t break the one-million mark.
The record for a UFC event — 1.6 million buys — still stands from 11 July, 2009 (six years to the day before McGregor versus Aldo), when Brock Lesnar defeated Frank Mir in the main event at UFC 100 in Las Vegas. The organisation hasn’t attracted one million buys since the 2013 rematch between Chris Weidman and Anderson Silva.
According to figures compiled by Dave Meltzer, seven events in UFC history have exceeded one million buys on the pay-per-view market:
- UFC 100: Lesnar vs. Mir (11 July, 2009) – 1,600,000
- UFC 116: Lesnar vs. Carwin (3 July, 2010) – 1,060,000
- UFC 66: Liddell vs. Ortiz II (30 December, 2006) – 1,050,000
- UFC 169: Weidman vs. Silva (28 December, 2013) – 1,025,000
- UFC 91: Lesnar vs. Couture (15 November, 2011) – 1,010,000
- UFC 92: Griffin vs. Evans (27 December, 2008) – 1,000,000
- UFC 114: Evans vs. Jackson (29 May, 2010) – 1,000,000
During Jose Aldo’s four-and-a-half-year reign as UFC featherweight champion, the Brazilian has headlined a pay-per-view bill on four occasions. His most lucrative PPV showing was a reported 330,000 buys from his 2013 bout against Frankie Edgar.
Aldo’s meeting with Conor McGregor is certain to result in a significant increase on those figures, but is the fight capable of drawing the largest TV audience in UFC history? Early indications suggest that it’s unlikely, but there’s not long to go until we find out.
