UFC 261 delivered a very memorable night of fights this past weekend and it also appears to have been a success financially, with the word from the Sports Business Journal being that it did 700,000 buys domestically.
To be fair, that’s not coming close to the whopping 1.3 million buys that the first headlining clash between Kamaru Usman and Jorge Masvidal delivered at UFC 251 in July of last year, but the circumstances were different in that instance as there was a huge buzz surrounding the promotion’s first visit to Fight Island, ‘Gamebred’ was at the peak of his fame after having won the ‘BMF’ title against Nate Diaz last time out, and fans were largely starved of big sporting events back then due to Covid restrictions.
After Usman’s dominant performance on that occasion there was less enthusiasm about the match-up this time around, but the UFC did stack the card with two very strong female title fights as Weili Zhang fought Rose Namajunas and Valentina Shevchenko took on Jessica Andrade, and they’ve been rewarded by still very respectable PPV sales.
Best of all though is the fact that the 700,000 who tuned in will have surely gone away feeling that there money was well spent due to the level of entertainment delivered, with the three title fights all featuring vintage performances from the eventual winners.
And of course from the UFC’s perspective the icing on the cake will have been having also been able to cash in on an arena full of fans for the first time in over a year.
