The trilogy between Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier was not as big a success as last month’s UFC 251, but it still did fairly well in terms of pay-per-view buys.
John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reported on Thursday that UFC 252 generated an estimated 500,000 global buys, with about 400,000 coming from ESPN+ subscriptions in the United States. That would eclipse the first matchup between them at UFC 226, although it’s unknown what the buyrate was for UFC 241.
According to Ourand, this was the UFC’s fourth-best selling pay-per-view of 2020, which puts it squarely in the middle of the seven PPVs they’ve run. UFC 246: McGregor vs. Cowboy, 249: Ferguson vs. Gaethje, and 251: Usman vs. Masvidal all had higher buyrates, whereas 247: Jones vs. Reyes, 248: Adesanya vs. Romero, and 250: Nunes vs. Spencer all did worse.
UFC 252’s preliminary card was the number one rated program on cable television on Saturday, so add that to the 2 million Google searches and while this may not have been a mega-event it certainly isn’t some massive disappointment. Neither Miocic nor Cormier is a massive draw and truth be told, heavyweight has historically not been a massive PPV seller outside of virtually the entire Brock Lesnar era.
The next UFC pay-per-view is September 26th, with middleweight champion Israel Adesanya vs. Paulo Costa headlining UFC 253.