The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s first pay-per-view of 2021 was
not without some issues.
Early on in the pay-per-view broadcast, many ESPN+ subscribers who
had purchased
UFC 257 —
including many professional fighters — experienced difficulty
getting the streaming service to work properly.
Ultimately, those issues were resolved and viewers were able to
witness Dustin
Poirier defeat Conor
McGregor via second-round technical knockout in Saturday’s main
event at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. And as with most McGregor
events, it appears to have been big business.
“It was mostly on the West Coast. The West Coast had some
problems,” White said of the troubles with the ESPN+ stream. “But
they got it fixed and it was a good night. It was a really good
night. One of the Top 2 all-time.
“It’s either No. 2 or No. 3 all-time.”
McGregor’s loss to Khabib
Nurmagomedov at UFC 229 in October 2018 reportedly sold in the
neighborhood of 2.4 million pay-per-views, making it the
promotion’s biggest event ever. At least four other UFC cards
featuring the Irish star are believed to have done more than 1
million buys. The UFC does not officially release pay-per-view
figures to the public, however.
The ESPN+ issues received even more scrutiny than usual after the
price of pay-per-views was raised from $64.99 to $69.99 to begin
the year. Additionally, White
vowed to crack down on those who stream the UFC’s premium cards
illegally leading up to Saturday’s event. According to the UFC
boss, that venture proved to be successful.
“I told you guys that we found the guy and we were watching him. He
put out a statement that night and said ‘I will not be streaming
the McGregor vs. Poirier [fight] anymore, but I will show you how
to buy it legally,” White said. “Now his whole streaming service
has been deleted and is gone, disappeared.
“One down and a s—tload to go. Every event I’m gonna go after one
of these guys — or more, we’ll see. Whoever you are guy that did
this, good move. We had you, pal. All you had to do was pop up that
stream and you were in big trouble.”