UFC 259 has proven to be another successful pay-per-view event for the promotion, with a reported 800,000 buys being generated worldwide.
That breaks down to 600,000 buys in the United States, with the remaining 200,000 coming from international markets.
Of course it’s still a long way short of the very impressive 1.6 million buys that UFC 257: Poirier vs. McGregor II achieved back in January, but events featuring the sport’s biggest star are always expected to outperform the promotion’s other shows by a large margin.
The UFC did build a big card for UFC 259 though, stacking it with no less than three title fights, which say Jan Blachowicz successfully defend his light-heavyweight title for the first time against Israel Adesanya in the main event, featherweight queen Amanda Nunes quickly dispose of Megan Anderson and Aljamain Sterling controversially winning the bantamweight title from Petr Yan via disqualification.
That presented more value for money than normal on a PPV card, though it’s likely that Israel Adesanya was the event’s biggest draw given that he also pulled in 700,000 buys for his last headliner against Paulo Costa at UFC 253 last year.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Adesanya’s drawing power holds now that he’s suffered his first ever defeat in MMA as he returns back down to middleweight to defend his title next time out.
