Early estimates for UFC 217 PPV buys are high, but not ‘Notoriously’ high

UFC 217 was a stacked pay-per-view card with three UFC title fights. For those that didn’t tune in to the action, it was a thrilling card where new champions were crowned in each title fight.

The main event of the evening saw the return of former UFC welterweight kingpin Georges St-Pierre. With previously last competing in 2013, GSP returned to the Octagon up a weight class and challenged Michael Bisping for his middleweight title. “Rush” ended up securing the win in the third round by choking Bisping unconscious after dropping him with a punch and some ground and pound. With the win, St-Pierre became the fourth fighter in history to become a two-weight UFC world champion.

Despite St-Pierre’s return and the other two title fights, which included Cody Garbrandt vs TJ Dillashaw and Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs Rose Namajunas, it appears at least from one report that UFC 217 did not go over one million pay-per-view buys. In contrast, cards with Conor McGregor fighting have done over a million buys in at least his past four UFC competitions.

MMA insider Jed I. Goodman tweeted that according to Dave Meltzer’s subscription-based Wrestling Observer Newsletter, early estimates for UFC 217’s pay-per-view buy rate in North America was around 875,000. This included the U.S. and Canada. However, they do not include internet pay-per-view buys.

WON reports the early estimates for #UFC217 in North America are 875k buys (625k in the US & 250k in Canada).

Again, those are early estimates and don't include Internet PPVs.

— Jed I. Goodman (@jedigoodman) November 10, 2017

Doubtful it did more than 100k buys online.

The prelims on Fox GO and FOx Now did 20k+.

— Jed I. Goodman (@jedigoodman) November 10, 2017

The UFC is privately owned and does not need to disclose financials or pay-per-view numbers. UFC President Dana White often says how many pay-per-view buys an event will do but that’s just taking his word for it as White said during the post-fight press conference that UFC 217 did well over 1 million buys.

on 11/10/2017.