White says UFC 229 trending to 3 million PPV buys
Dana White: “No fighters got tickets to this fight. Daniel Cormier will be there. He bought three tickets. I bought tickets. Ari Emanuel bought tickets.”
UFC president Dana White spoke recently with ESPN and said Saturday’s UFC 229, the biggest PPV event in MMA history, is getting bigger.
I told you guys we were trending at close to 2 million pay-per-view buys, said White, as transcribed by Tristen Critchfield for Sherdog. We’re closer to 3 million now. We’re trending close to 3 million pay-per-view buys for this fight.
This thing’s breaking every record we’ve ever had as far as numbers go, If you look at Mayweather-McGregor, the first episode of Embedded in 24 hours did 800,000 views. This one’s at 1.7 million in 24 hours….I could just go on for days with numbers and how it’s scaling. It’s gonna be big.
Obviously Conor’s been gone for a couple years and he’s coming back and taking on the biggest, nastiest, toughest guy out there right now. Undefeated, 26-0, never lost a round. Khabib is the guy. Conor is so big and famous and people love watching him fight because this is the stuff he does. He goes right after everybody. He doesn’t care. If you’re a fight fan you love it.
Massive ticket sales from the U.K. and Ireland. This is also the largest gate in Vegas we’ve ever done and the second biggest gate ever in UFC history. This thing’s gonna come in at $17 million. [Madison Square Garden] was $18 million.
This is the biggest fight we’ve ever done. We don’t ever sell the Zuffa section, the section behind me. No fighters got tickets to this fight, he said. Daniel Cormier will be there. He bought three tickets. I bought tickets. [UFC owner] Ari Emanuel bought tickets. Everybody paid for their tickets. This is the first time ever we split the media section in half. We sold half of that section and the other half is media. Never done that before either.
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