CONOR McGREGOR’S WIN over Chad Mendes appears to have broken the one-million mark for pay-per-view buys.
That’s according to the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s website, which has been updated to include the figures from UFC 189, which took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on 11 July.
The UFC didn’t make an official announcement regarding the figures, but a paragraph added to McGregor’s profile on UFC.com claims that one million US fans forked out to watch the action:
The fight attracted a record 16,019 fans to the MGM Grand Garden Arena, plus a $7.2-million live gate and 1 million pay per view buys, proving McGregor’s sizable drawing power.
As a private company, the UFC generally does not release official PPV figures, but they are usually picked up by industry insiders.
The figures, should they be correct, mean that in spite of his prediction, McGregor didn’t break the UFC’s record for PPV buys, which belongs to Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir from UFC 100 — an event that reportedly drew 1.6 million. However, UFC 189 has joined a select group of eight UFC events to have broken the one-million mark.
It also makes it the organisation’s biggest-selling event of the year — not bad considering the late change of opponent — surpassing the 800,000 buys from UFC 182: Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier back in January. In fact, UFC 189 is the first UFC event to hit one million buys since the rematch of Chris Weidman and Anderson Silva in December 2013.
As a caveat to the figures on the UFC website, McGregor’s profile also states that there were 3,000 Irish fans in Vegas for the event — an extremely conservative estimate, to say the least.
