Report | UFC 259 sold 800,000 pay-per-views worldwide

According to a new report from the Sports Business Journal, this past Saturday’s UFC 259 pay-per-view event sold 800,000 PPVs worldwide.

UFC 259 featured a super fight in the main event between UFC light heavyweight champion Jan Blachowicz and middleweight kingpin Israel Adesanya, one of the sport’s biggest stars. Along with that big fight, the event also featured two other title fights: Amanda Nunes vs. Megan Anderson for the UFC women’s featherweight title, and Petr Yan vs. Aljamain Sterling for the UFC bantamweight title. Overall, it was a great card and paper and mostly lived up to the hype. But the question that UFC president Dana White and the other organizational executives wanted to know was how many PPV buys the card would sell.

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We now have the answer to that question. According to Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand, UFC 259 sold 600,000 pay-per-views to domestic watchers in the United States, plus another 200,000 international pay-per-views for a grand total of 800,000 PPVs sold. When Adesanya headlined UFC 253 against Paulo Costa last fall, 700,000 worldwide PPVs were sold. It appears that UFC 259 is now Adesanya’s biggest PPV seller since he starting headlining UFC events. The loss to Blachowicz hurts, but it was still a big event from a financial POV, and both headliners are likely going to get a nice bonus from the UFC.

Having said that, there’s still room for improvement on this number. While 800,000 is a solid number overall, it still pales in comparison to UFC 257 in January, which reportedly sold 1.6 million PPVs worldwide. Of course, Conor McGregor headlined that card against Dustin Poirier, and anytime McGregor fights his cards see a big bump in sales. The UFC surely never expected Adesanya to sell McGregor’s level of PPVs, so the fact his PPV against Blachowicz, who’s not a big draw, still got to half of McGregor’s number is solid.

Did UFC 259 live up to your expectations?