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Win or lose, Conor McGregor is the biggest draw in mixed martial arts.
The former two-division champion has won only one fight in the past five years and has gone just 3-4 since claiming UFC gold when he beat Jose Aldo for the featherweight championship in 2016.
Despite all of that, McGregor continues to captivate the audience as evidenced by the pay-per-view numbers from last weekend’s UFC 264 event in Las Vegas.
According to a report from John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal, UFC 264 was an overwhelming success with 1.8 million pay-per-view buys. 1.3 million buys were in the United States, while 500,000 were sold internationally.
The 1.8 million buys would make UFC 264 the second-best-selling PPV in UFC history, behind McGregor’s fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229 in October 2018 which sold a record 2.4 million buys.
To add to the numbers, the preliminary card on ESPN was watched by 1.6 million viewers, which made it the most-viewed Saturday program on ESPN.
