By all appearances, UFC 257: Poirier vs. McGregor 2 was a smashing success.
Per usual, Conor McGregor has delivered. He may not have come away from his UFC 257 main event against Dustin Poirier with a victory, but he spearheaded another big win for the UFC, with the first pay per view of the year reportedly generating 1.6 million buys overall according to a Sports Business Journal report. 1.2 million of the buys were sold through ESPN+, and the other 400,000 were international buys. These numbers would make UFC 257 the second most successful pay per view in the history of the UFC, behind only UFC 229: Nurmagomedov vs. McGregor, which boasted 2.4 million buys.
Both Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier have expressed interest in a rematch, and with numbers like these, the UFC is almost certain to jump at the chance to have a trilogy fight while this past event is still fresh in everyone’s mind. Conor McGregor’s team has come out and stated that McGregor would like for the trilogy to be for the lightweight championship. On paper, this is definitely a hard sell from a meritocracy standpoint, but you can be sure that the McGregor camp will use the exorbitant numbers from the UFC 257 pay-per-view to do the selling for them.
The co-main event of UFC 257 witnessed Michael Chandler make his successful UFC debut by knocking out Dan Hooker in the first round and punctuate his victory with an electrifying promo. The main card also saw Amanda Ribas upset by Marina Rodriguez, Joanne Calderwood defeat Jessica Eye, and Makhmud Muradov best Andrew Sanchez via TKO. All in all, the card delivered and once again demonstrated that PPV price hikes do not necessarily negatively impact buys.
The next UFC offering is February 13 with UFC 258 and will feature welterweight champ Kamaru Usman defending his championship against Gilbert Burns in the main event.
Are you surprised by this report of the UFC 257 pay-per-view numbers?
