Conor McGregor took to social media to show that he is still a massive draw, despite winning or losing. McGregor shared a partial pay-per-view buyrate slip after UFC 257, documenting over one million buys.
McGregor Shows Pay-Per-View Buy Slip
The effect for both Dustin Porier and Conor McGregor following UFC 257 was beneficial for both parties, despite McGregor losing. Poirier walked away with a victory, a massive payday, and over 500k new followers on social media. McGregor, however, may have left the octagon with a loss. Nonetheless, Conor has seemed to walk away with a lot of pay-per-view point earnings.
— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) October 4, 2021
Initial reports summarized that McGregor walked away from the event with a $5 million fight purse. And, that Poirier reportedly made over $1 million for a fight for the first time in his career against the Irishman.
Success of UFC 257
According to Dave Meltzer, UFC 257 was one of the most successful events in the sport’s history. And because of McGregor’s mere presence on the card, the Abu Dhabi government paid a hefty fee to host his return.
“An interesting question, given the nature of the revenue, is if ESPN is kicking any money into McGregor or if it’s all coming from UFC, since the windfall he’s bringing is going to ESPN. UFC got a huge figure from the Abu Dhabi government for its three shows over eight days, largely based on bringing in McGregor,” wrote Meltzer.”
Since the event was a massive success and the UFC has a home in Abu Dhabi, it’ll be interesting to see if the United Arab Emirates will go above and beyond to get McGregor to come back. After all, the region admitted that the mere presence of McGregor helped their economy tremendously.
Early predictions indicated that the event would be projected to hit 1.6 million PPV buys. Although the paper doesn’t symbolize that McGregor versus Poirier reached that number directly, the event was still a massive success.
